The Cauldron

The most realistic and compelling novel of the Second World War, republished for the first time in 40 yearsWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY AL MURRAY'This is a novel, although the battle and many of the incidents described in the book are true.' ZENOUnless you have experienced war, it is impossible to imagine its grim reality. But The Cauldron does just that - unsparingly, painfully, brilliantly - because it is written by someone who was there.This is the story of a platoon of British paratroopers dropped sixty miles behind German lines into the bloody maelstrom that Arnhem became in September 1944. With the end of the war nigh, the Allies make one bold bet to end it before Christmas. But it is a bet doomed to failure...Like never before, this is what it must have been like for the men parachuted into the cauldron. It has the smell, the taste, the fear of war - the terrifying sense of kill or be killed, and the horror of watching your friends die in front of you...The Cauldron is a classic of war writing which takes the reader right to the heart of the action like no other WW2 novel.

A book by a hero about heroes. It conveys the smell of battle, the pain of the doomed men as few other books ever have done NEWS OF THE WORLD
This impressive novel, written by a man who fought there with the 4th Parachute Brigade, is a memorial of which his comrades would be proud DAILY MAIL
A cruel and sizzling war novel THE SUN

Zeno is the pseudonym of Gerald Lamarque, born in London in 1920, who served with the Pathfinders of the First Airborne Division in the Second World War, in Africa, the Central Mediterranean and, most notably, at the Battle of Arnhem, the experience of which he memorably describes in The Cauldron. He was the author of three other novels and died in 1978.

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