About the Battle of Arnhem

Al Murray as written a second factual history book about the Second World War.

Arnhem: Black Tuesday aims to offer a new perspective on the daring but thwarted attempt to secure a vital bridgehead across the Rhine as the Allies swept across France and Belgium in the aftermath of D-Day.

Publishers Penguin say: ‘It is always written about, with the benefit of unerring 20/20 hindsight, as being doomed to fail, but the men who fought there, men of military legend, didn't know that that was to be their fate.

‘By focusing on the events of one day as they happened through the eyes of the British participants and without bringing any knowledge of what would happen tomorrow to bear, Al Murray offers a very different perspective to a familiar narrative. 

‘Some things went right and a great many more went wrong, but recounting them in this way allows the reader to understand for the first time how certain decisions were taken in the moment and how opportunities were squandered.’

The 336-page hardback will be published on September 12, a week before the 80th anniversary of the battle. 

It is Murray’s second fully serious military history book following Command, published in 2022, which analysed  the key Allied leaders in the Second World War.

The Pub Landlord stand-up also wrote the more comic history volume The Last 100 Years (Give Or Take) and All That as well as the memoir Watching War Films with My Dad.

Penguin say Murray has always been obsessed with Arnhem, and in Arnhem: Black Tuesday, ‘brings all of his knowledge, interpretation and enthusiasm to bear to tell the story of one of history’s great heroic failures differently for the first time’.

Here’s an episode of Murray’s 2004 Discovery channel series Road To Berlin which examined Arnhem:

•​ Arnhem: Black Tuesday is available from Amazon priced £23 in hardback, £10.99 on Kindle or £7.99 as an audibook, or from bookshop.org, which supports independent retailers, below: 

Published: 3 Jun 2024