Hello and welcome for the Spectators to Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

And this week I'm pleased to welcome James Holland,

the historian whose new book, Brothers in Arms,

won legendary tank regiment's bloody war from D-Day to V-E-Day, well, does more or less

exactly what the subtitle says. It's the story of the Sherwood Rangers from the time when they

first came ashore on the beach and D-Day to the end of the war. James, can I start? It's enormously

kind of full and detailed book. What was it the made you pick the Sherwood Rangers

is there just more material available for them

well there was for me and the reason is because

I've had an association with that regiment

which sort of began very accidentally back in 2004

which was the first time I ever went to Normandy

and a friend of mine organised a trip

for a whole load of us to go out for the 60th anniversary.

And one of the people that was among the party was a chap called David Christopherson,

who I hadn't actually met before, but we very quickly became firm friends.

And his father had been the officer commanding of the Sherwood Rangers yeomanry

for much of the last 11 months of the war. He actually arrived on

D-Day as commander of a squad from the Sherwood Rangers, but within a matter of days, the Sherwood Rangers

lost two of their CEOs, and so he stepped into the breach, and it was a post he kept till the end of

the war. It was the most amazing time, because, you know, I was on Gold Beach on the anniversary with David and he was talking about his father landing and you know this is all

...