Book Review: “Battle of Britain, 1940: The Finest Hour’s Human Cost”

(See all my Book Reviews) – Author Dilip Sarkar published the book “Battle of Britain, 1940: The Finest Hour’s Human Cost” in 2020. This is Mr. Sarkar’s second publication.

I received an ARC of this novel through https://www.netgalley.com in return for a fair and honest review. I categorize this novel as ‘PG’. This book tells the story of the Battle of Britain. This intense air war lasted from July 10 until October 31, 1940.

Each chapter of the book tells the story of a different airman. These are not the stories of the well-known aces. Most are pilots with the RAF, but some ground crew and Luftwaffe pilots are also included. All the people focussed on in the book died during the Battle of Britain.

The famous ‘Few’ who defended Britain comprised nearly 3,000 crewmen. Of that number, more than 540 lost their lives. They contributed an incredible effort in the defense of Britain. Without their determined effort, Britain would very likely have fallen to Nazi Germany.

I enjoyed the 12.5 hours I spent reading this 296-page history. I have read other accounts of the Battle of Britain. This book gives a more personal account of those eventful 16 weeks. Mr. Sarkar has done a superb job of telling their stories. I like the selected cover art. I give this novel a 4.4 (rounded down to a 4) out of 5.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

---

If you are interested in the WWII era of history, you may find these three pages of interest. 

• The “World War II Sources” page is a constantly growing collection of more than 430 links to museums, memorials, websites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and other sources with information on the World War II-era in history.
• The “World War II Timeline” page expands almost daily and shows events leading up to WWII, as well as during the war. Events are broken down into the Pacific and European Theaters by date.
• The About WWII page is a collection of links to posts that I have made over the years that are relevant to WWII.