History
OPERATION PEDESTAL
THE FLEET THAT BATTLED TO MALTA 1942
MAX HASTINGS
William Collins, 336pp, £25
In 1942, a British convoy set out to relieve the starving people of Malta, which was our crucial military base in the Mediterranean. Regarded as a suicidal mission, only five out of 14 merchant supply ships made it through and 500 lives were lost. This is ‘an eye-level view of mortal danger set against a major inflection point during World War II’, wrote Jonathan W Jordan in the Wall Street Journal. ‘Mr Hastings paints a portrait of naval combat with an artist’s brush guided by more than a half-century of combat reportage. Compassionate toward men who braved bombs, torpedoes, fire and a cruel sea, he showcases the Royal Navy – along with the merchant vessels it guarded – at its finest hour.’
In his review for the Sunday Times, Giles Milton praised ‘the white-knuckle ride of Hastings’s gripping narrative... a high-octane adventure served up with torpedoes, Stuka dive bombers and catastrophic U-boat attacks… heart-stirring… memorable… and highly readable’. Declaring it ‘a cracker’, Gerard DeGroot in the Times, wrote that ‘with his usual combination of sensitivity to human suffering and superb dramatic instinct, Hastings has given us a gripping tale that reminds me of reading Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea when I was a boy... The immediacy of this book obliterates the cold detachment that time’s passage usually allows. We feel in our bones torpedoes hitting home. Hastings takes his readers into the bomb-blasted wardroom of the carrier Indomitable where Arthur Lawson encounters “an officer finishing a drink he was having, with his head half blown away”. In that same wardroom Hector Mackenzie “was distressed by the sight of a gaping hole in the... wooden panelling, through which had been blasted the head of... George Measures, his closest friend”. Mackenzie’s horror becomes ours... The delight lies in the detail, the percussive power of tiny facts... Hastings understands the fragility of human beings at war.’
Indeed, wrote Saul David in the Sunday Telegraph, Hastings ‘has written many wonderful books, but few combine so well his unique gifts as a historian: an understanding of human nature, a nose for a telling quotation, and the ability to write gripping prose.’
