War at the top: The experiences of General Sir Leslie Hollis - James Leasor (First edition)

War At The Top is not simply the memoirs of yet another General, nor is it just a further book about the war.

This is a book about people - the people who took the decisions on which victory rested; what happened behind the scenes at the great international conferences - which were never so smooth as the official communiqués would have us believe - and at the daily tip level meetings in the strange, armoured headquarters carved out of the cellars underneath Whitehall.

This is a frank and fascinating story of soldiers, statesmen, and world leaders seen by one privileged to sit in at most of the major policy discussions of the war: General Sir Leslie Hollis, K.C.B., K.B.E. As Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff Committee he was privy to all the great decisions, and attended more than 6,000 of the meetings of the Chiefs of Staff.

He does not claim that any decisions he took influenced history, nor that he was always right while the rest were wrong. Instead, and much more impressively, he shows from his unique position of authority, who was right, and when and why.

War At The Top is an essential companion to the Churchill, Alanbrooke and Montgomery memoirs; for the first time the personal factors of the great decisions are discussed and analysed. Here is a new face of history and the last 20 years, fantastic, sometimes almost unbelievable, frequently ludicrous, always moving, a picture of war - at the top.