For forty years, the battle of Dunkirk has been celebrated as one of the most extraordinary triumphs in British history, but it this astonishing book, Nicholas Harman shows that it was in fact a major defeat, embellished and made glorious by the British propaganda machine. Mr. Harman interviewed survivors of the evacuation and examined previously unexplored Cabinet papers, war diaries and other documents in compiling this vivid and fascinating account, the first to place the military and naval events on the Flanders coast in the context of the strategic and political decisions that shaped them. Dunkirk is a sweeping and powerful narrative about an event of extraordinary proportions and immense importance in the history of World War II.