Ten Days to D-Day: Countdown to the Liberation of Europe

by David Stafford

The allied landings in Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, constituted the largest seaborne assault in history and changed both the course of the Second World War and the century.

While the story of the landings has been told many times before, this is the first to reveal the role that human error, political infighting, deception, and double agents played in the crucial ten days leading up to the invasion.

Based primarily on unpublished diaries and letters and written with the pace of a thriller, it tells the story through the eyes of ten individuals caught up in the men and women, civilians and soldiers, secret agents, and political prisoners.

None knows if the landings will succeed, and the book describes in gripping detail the suspenseful preparations they make during the excruciating wait for the day that could have taken a fatefully different turn.

Praise for David

'Prodigious tension…. Reads like a thriller’ - The Times 'Readable, exciting and often moving' - Living History 'A double triumph of gripping story and sensitive celebration' - Times Literary Supplement

'Terrific an utterly absorbing account' - BBC History

David Stafford is the acclaimed author of many books on Churchill, the Second World War, and intelligence history, including the official history of the Special Operations Executive in Italy 1943-1945. He has frequently served as a TV consultant and media commentator and is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

367 pages, Paperback

Published May 28, 2021

About the author

David Alexander Tetlow Stafford is projects director at Edinburgh University's Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars and Leverhulme Emeritus Professor in the University's School of History, Classics and Archaeology.

Stafford took his B.A. at Downing College, Cambridge in 1963. He then undertook postgraduate study at the University of London, taking an M.A. and finally his Ph.D. in history in 1968.

Beginning his career with government service, Stafford served in the British Diplomatic Service as a third secretary at the Foreign Office from 1967 to 1968, and then as second secretary in 1968. He then took up an appointment as research associate (1968–70) at the Centre of International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He then became assistant professor of history (1970–76) at Canada's University of Victoria in British Columbia. He was promoted to associate professor of history (1976–82) and finally professor of history (1982–84). He then became director of studies (1985–86) and executive director (1986–92) at the Canadian Institute of International Affairs in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. From 1992 to 2000 Stafford became a visiting professor at Edinburgh University's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, and then, from 2000, he became projects director at the Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars.

Stafford is particularly noted for his scholarly works concerning Winston Churchill and British intelligence, various aspects of the Second World War, and Twentieth Century intelligence and espionage with a focus on Britain. He now resides in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

He is a regular book reviewer, appearing in The Times (London), BBC History Magazine, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, the Times Herald Tribune (Paris), and Saturday Night and the Globe and Mail (Toronto).