Hitler’s Invasion of East Anglia, 1940: An Historical Cover Up?
By Martin W. Bowman
ISBN: 978-1526705488
(Pen & Sword Books, 2019) – £25.
The title of this book should be taken as instructive. That the last twenty per cent of this book is dedicated to sprawling appendices should be taken as indicative. The fact that the Author’s Note includes the phrase “…the contents of this book are factual, save for Chapter Nine, in which I make no apology for using the false document technique to create verisimilitude in a work of fiction” should be taken as nothing less than a searing self-indictment. Before we go any further, I really like Pen & Sword books. The book does not start well, however; “an historical cover up” – surely that should be “a historical cover-up”?
Bowman’s ninth chapter really is complete fiction. It’s hackneyed, clichéd fiction, with two-dimensional characters and a tortured ‘plot’… and it has no place in a well-written history book. It doesn’t even have a history book, and that’s saying something.
