This hardback was given to me by my mum one Christmas as it featured the 8th Army of which my grandad was a part. I'm not sure to what extent he was involved with El Alamein but he was definitely in Africa and served under Monty. Band of Brothers is one of my favourite box sets, I love reading about history, particularly World War II and so this for many reasons was a book with my name stamped all over it
It's obviously factual and is quite lengthy and so I wasn't expecting it to be sunlounger reading. I wasn't however expecting to need a dictionary to decode some of the pages. I have a degree, I am a solicitor, I read anything and everything constantly and consider myself to have reasonable intelligence yet even I had never come across words like sybaritic or grangiliquence. It alienated me as I'm sure it would do a lot of people and I really found myself frustrated by Dimbleby for writing in such a way as to make it so inaccessible. The soldiers he wrote about in his book wouldn't have found it readable and at times neither did I.
It also seemed to take a long time to get to the actual El Alamein battle(s). How important Africa was in the overall scheme of things, Churchill's wooing of America (well the President), his temper tantrums and America's reluctance to commit were laboured over endlessly.
I also found the reference to Dimbleby's father quite strange. Jonathan introduced him as his father and the idea behind the book seemed to stem from this personal connection to the war however in the actual pages of the book Dimbleby was referred to without any sentiment and seemed to be slightly shoe horned into the book before being removed from the tale all together.
I did learn a large amount, I hadn't read quite so much about Churchill's involvement or Romel's brilliance and the whole thing came across as very factually correct. Dimbleby made crytal clear how close we were to losing, not just Africa but Malta and indeed the war in it's entirely but for certain chance things such as the German lack of supplies or Hitler's obsession with Russia. How slim the differences between winning and losing!
Given that I had a personal connection to the book the horrors faced didn't quite hit home somehow. The casualties (of which there were thousands) got lost in amongst the frequent tank round ups. Lumping the two together so frequently lessened the impact the loss of life should have had on the reader.
In the end it became a book I was keen to finish so I could move on. It will stay on my shelf but only for my grandad's connection to the subject matter. It has inspired me to research exactly what role my grandad played and once I do should I find a book that more truly represents him and his experience Destiny in the Desert will be eagerly replaced. If you like facts, a good overview of the events and decisions leading up to El Amaein and are handy with 8 plus lettered words give it a read. If you can recommend a book about the same subject matter that perhaps is more emotionally powerful let me know.
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