I'm Simon Sharma and Forronbodies, my 20th book and the one I'm most passionate about,

is available now. It's a story of our human condition in times of pandemic,

now as well as in times past, of inspiring heroism and troubling fear.

I do hope you enjoy reading it. An epic and moving history of pandemics and vaccines.

Forronbodies is available in all good bookshops and as an audiobook from

Audible.

Well I'm sitting on a bench, it's early morning, I'm on the south bank of Arnhem, I'm looking at

the bridge, cyclists, a hurtling past, very few wearing helmets, it has to be said.

And sitting beside me on this bench is legendary historian Dan Snipe. Morning Dan. Hey buddy,

how are you? Yeah I'm really good, really nice to have you on the show. And I mean this is an

amazing place isn't it? I mean this is my first time here, you're an old hand at Arnhem,

but I mean look at that bridge, it's enormous. It's one of the, it's one of the best, I think it's

one of the best battlefield to come and visit. You get such a powerful, the Rhine is such an amazing

river system, you get these kind of flat open landscapes, you see why they're all terrified about

those 88s to the south of us here. And then you have got, I've been lucky enough to dig up bits

of the battlefield here and go along with archaeologists and see some good stuff, but I,

yeah Arnhem's one of my faves. So why do you think it is that this battle, market garden,

an Arnhem particularly, has such a place in our narrative of the Second World War? Why is it so

important to us? Well it's, it's got everything hasn't it, it's got hubris, Montgomery, the most,

one of the most cautious steady field marshals, generals, commanders in British history, made this

uncharacteristic desperate gamble and it going pretty close to succeeding, it came pretty

nice succeeding. John Frost did manage to capture of 8,000 men dropped in this area to capture that

...