Russell Barnes

Why did they spend so much of the war battling through North Africa and Italy? Historian David Reynolds reassesses Winston Churchill's conviction that the Mediterranean was the 'soft underbelly' of Hitler's Europe. It became a dark and dangerous obsession for Churchill. Reynolds reveals a very different prime minister who was politically vulnerable at home, desperate to shore up a British empire abroad, losing faith in his army and even ready to deceive his American allies

Professor David Reynolds investigates the events and personalities responsible for the peace treaty that ended the Great War in November 1918. On discovering Germany held the advantage up to eight months earlier, he examines the humiliation of the country's eventual defeat.