The Real English Patient

The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy

The real story behind The English Patient.

John Bierman has written many books of which the most recent is Alamein which he co-wrote with Colin Smith and which was published by Viking in 2002. Bierman, a seasoned ex-BBC television correspondent and documentary film-maker, worked as a senior sub-editor in Fleet Street and edited dailies in East Africa and the West Indies before moving in to broadcasting.

Who was the real 'English patient'? The desert explorer Laszlo Almasy, on whom the character was loosely based, was very different from the romantic hero of the prize-winning novel anmd multiple Oscar-winning movie of that name. But a similar aura of mystery surrounds them both. While the fictional Almasy gave the Germans his desert maps only because he was desperate to keep a promise to his dying mistress, the real-life Almasy worked for Germany military intelligence only because he was desperate for the chance to return to the desert he loved more than anything or anybody else. Or so John Bierman implies in this arresting and carefully-researched biography. Among its many unexpected revelations is that far from being the love of his friend's wife, Almasy was a homosexual with no interest at all in the opposite sex. Nor was he really a count, although he was born into the minor Hungarian nobility. In short, the real-life Almasy remains an enigma. For instance there is good reason to believe that he became a double agent working for both sides in World War II - and compelling evidence that he spied for British intelligence during the Cold War.

War Without Hate

Alamein

'Rommel, the Desert Fox, has had biographers aplenty. Here is a first-class account of the arduous hunt to run him to ground' John Crossland, Sunday Times

'Excellent ... a remarkable achievement and ought to be recognised as one of the most successful histories of the Western Desert and North African fighting yet to have appeared' John Keegan, Daily Telegraph 
 
For the British, the battle fought at El Alamein in October 1942 became the turning point of the Second World War. In this study of the desert war, John Bierman and Colin Smith show why it is remembered by its survivors as a 'war without hate'. Through extensive research the authors provide a compellingly fresh perspective on the see-saw campaign in which the two sides chased each other back and forth across the unforgiving North African landscape.

John Bierman and Colin Smith are both award winning journalists writing for most major newspapers. They have separately published a number of previous books, this being their second collaboration. Their first, FIRE IN THE NIGHT, was a widely praised biography of the maverick British commander, Orde Wingate. Colin Smith is the author of Singapore Burning, published by Penguin, and the co-author of Warsaw Boy (with Andrew Borowiec).

'Excellent ... a remarkable achievement and ought to be recognised as one of the most succesful histories of the Western Desert and North African fighting yet to have appeared' John Keegan, Daily Telegraph 
 
For the British, the battle fought at ElAlamein in October 1942 became the turning point of the Second World War. In this study of the desert war, John Bierman and Colin Smith show why it is remembered by its survivors as a 'war without hate'. Through extensive research the authors provide a compellingly fresh perspective on the see-saw campaign in which the two sides chased each other back and forth across the unforgiving North African landscape.

The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust

Righteous Gentile

John Bierman was a journalist and biographer who for 25 years covered trouble spots all over the world for major news organizations in Britain, the USA and Canada. 
 
For 10 years he was a staff correspondent for BBC Television News and BBC World Service, and spent much of that time in the Middle East, where he discovered the story of Raoul Wallenberg, then virtually unknown. 
 
He has co-authored two books with journalist Colin Smith, including Alamein, War Without Hate, published by Penguin. 
 
John Bierman died in 2006.

Swallowed up by the Soviet prison system, the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, saviour of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Nazi holocaust, remains a mystery. 
 
Recently KGB files have been opened and many Communist crimes have been fully exposed. Yet there is still no evidence, apart from a handwritten note of doubtful authenticity, to support the Kremlin's claim that in 1947 Wallenberg, then thirty-five years old, died of a heart attack in prison. On the other hand there is abundant evidence - none of it conclusive, but much of it highly persuasive - that Wallenberg remained alive in captivity long after 1947, broken in body and spirit, somewhere in the vastness of the former Soviet Union. 
 
Righteous Gentile is the first book to tell the full story of Raoul Wallenberg's shining wartime exploits and shameful post-war incarceration.

Colin Smith

John Bierman

North Africa 1942

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. In this Special, Colin Smith and John Bierman make the battle of Alamein come alive. 
 
A turning point in the Second World War, the battle of El Alamein was the culmination of a military campaign like no other. Fought across desolate arid terrain, the brutal fighting was matched by a camaraderie and respect between enemies as witnessed in no other theatre of war. Combining gritty personal testimonies with thorough journalistic investigation, John Bierman and Colin Smith present a compelling account of a ferocious but compassionate battle and a journey through the unforgiving North African landscape.

John Bierman

Books by John Bierman

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