Beginning with my BBC One series 'Finest Hour', made for the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 2000, I have been studying and investigating the British experience of the Second World War now for 25 years and '1945 The Reckoning' is the third book I’ve written on the subject. 

For 1940 the Battle of Britain was inevitably front and centre and for 1942 it was the campaign in the North African

desert. Here the focus is India, Burma and the fate of the British and other empires.

As I researched the end of the war, I was drawn time and again to the words that historian Robin Prior chose to open Conquer We Must, his superb account of British strategy across the two great conflicts of the twentieth century:

It fell to Britain to confront a number of regimes which represented a threat to the civilised world . . . And, given the nature of the powers it was fighting, it was essential that any chance of a liberal world order (however imperfect) emerging with peace, depended on Britain being on the winning side.

I share this fundamentally positive view, yet how to square it with some of the less pleasant and certainly less liberal things that the British state actually did as the war came to an end? In that regard I found another quote most helpful, from historian David Olusoga:

History is not there to make us feel good, proud or comforted. It’s simply there to be fully understood in all its wonder, pain and, yes, its cruelties and injustices.

In telling the story of 1945 in a fresh and 'warts and all' style I used the same techniques as before. In this I was encouraged by these comments about my earlier work from one of Britain's most successful historians, James Holland:

'Craig and Clayton were among the very first to shatter the myth that Britain had been all alone, a plucky amateur defying the mighty moloch of Nazi Germany when all around them had already succumbed.  Rather, they rightly showed that Britain still had much in its favour following the retreat from Dunkirk and the fall of France, and not least its immense global reach, and its Dominions and empire.

Finest Hour is a book of immense energy, vividness and originality; a compelling, page-turning narrative that was rooted in the extraordinary human drama of that incredible first summer of the war.  This cut to the heart of what remains most people’s essential interest in the war: that this conflict, more so than others, was fundamentally about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.  It combines exciting and fresh historical research and perspectives with a very well defined cast list of characters who are the readers’ conduit through those dramatic summer months of 1940 - and all relayed with a reportage-style narrative that was both accessible and genuinely compellingly written. 

Walking this very narrow ridgeline between academic authority and narrative flair is exceptionally difficult and achieved by few writers.  Slip too far down the slopes of academia and the prose can swiftly become dry; but veer too heavily towards the side of the novelist’s prose and authority is swiftly lost. 

Phil Craig and Tim Clayton skillfully managed to stick to the ridge in Finest Hour, a book that dramatically changed the course of my life.  Reading it, I realised they had discovered the ideal formula for writing popular narrative history: a defined cast of characters, flawless research, and an exciting writing style that ensured both readability and authority.  It was after reading this that I sat down to write my own first history book and I cannot overstate the influence Finest Hour had on my own approach to writing and the career I have had as a historian ever since.’

James Holland, historian and broadcaster