Submarine is my first purely naval book. My aim was to present a complete picture of what it was like to be a submariner, under all circumstances, during the Second World War, irrespective of  nationality, rank and wartime allegiance. The submariners tell their stories in their own words, describing all the hardships of life on board and the dangers that faced them from mines, depth charges, torpedoes, mechanical failures, friendly fire and bad weather; they talk about the operations in which they participated – sinking enemy shipping, landing agents, laying mines, sneaking into fortified bases . They also describe the terrors of escaping a doomed boat, and encounters with the enemy, whether as prisoners or rescuers. The accounts range from the very funny to the dramatic and deeply moving. Every year and theatre of the war is covered in detail.

The accounts were given to me by a wonderful group of veterans from some ten countries, with additional material from archived memoirs and letters, oral history recordings, official reports and published books, so that 12 countries are represented: Britain, USA, Germany, Italy, Japan, France, Norway, Poland , Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, the USSR, Greece. Our orld War Two veterans are now all in their eighties and nineties, and it was inevitable that some of them would, as they themselves would say, cross the bar since they told me their stories. I am sad to have heard of the deaths of Earl Beegle (USA), Cdte Sergio Parodi (Italy) and Volkmar König (Germany). 

You don’t need to know one end of a submarine from the other: the submariners are very good at making you feel one of their tightly knit crew, and there is a very full glossary of technical terms and British/US slang.