PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Max Hastings is the author of twenty-six books, most about conflict, and between 1986 and 2002 served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, then editor of the Evening Standard. He has won many prizes both for journalism and his books, of which the most recent are All Hell Let Loose, Catastrophe and The Secret War, best-sellers translated around the world. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of King's College, London and was knighted in 2002. He has two grown-up children, Charlotte and Harry, and lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.
PRAISE FOR ABYSS: 'Brilliantly told... compelling... Hastings has cleverly woven the story together from all sides describing them in dramatic, almost hour by hour detail... this is a scary book. Hastings sees little evidence that today's leaders understand each other any better than they did in 1962' Sunday Times 'Grabs from the get-go... the moments in which the world teetered on the brink of total annihilation... come alive as they would if this were the very best fiction... Hastings is a writer in the permanent prime of his time... Abyss is up there with the best... packed full of mordant humour, perfectly pitched amid the lunacy of mankind facing imminent destruction' Justin Webb, Mail on Sunday 'The heart-stopping story of the missile crisis ...told ...with the narrative verve and panache that is Hastings's hallmark...a brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history' Saul David, Daily Telegraph 'Enter Hastings, a rock of probity and good sense. He's combined his investigative skills with his flair for storytelling to produce the most gripping narrative of the crisis I've yet encountered. His story unfolds, as it should, as a frightening but hopelessly addictive narrative of 13 nerve-wracking days when the world teetered above an abyss' Gerald DeGroot, Times 'A gripping retelling of those weeks of brinkmanship, reckless gambles, gung-ho generals and a thuggish USSR leader bullying a 'weak president'' Sun 'Superb... reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana' Daily Mail 'Magisterial... chilling' Daily Express 'Hastings lays bare, with chilling clarity, the ease with which political theatre and bluster could well have escalated into a scenario of mutually assured destruction' Observer
