Gavin Mortimer

Established in June 1940, the Long Range Desert Group was the inspiration of scientist and soldier Major Ralph Bagnold, a contemporary of T.E Lawrence who, in the inter-war years, explored the North African desert in a Model T Ford automobile. Mortimer takes us from the founding of the LRDG, through their treacherous journey across the Egyptian Sand Sea and beyond,...

Aristocrat, gambler, innovator and special forces legend, the life of David Stirling should need no retelling. His formation of the Special Air Service in the summer of 1941 led to a new form of warfare, and Stirling is remembered as the father of special forces soldiering. But was he really a military genius, or in fact a shameless self-publicist who...

A major illustrated history of the Long Range Desert Group from the foremost expert on British wartime special forces. Formed in June 1940 for the purpose of gathering intelligence behind enemy lines, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) played a secretive but vital role in North Africa during World War II. Highly trained in mechanised reconnaissance and specialising in desert...

Leading expert Gavin Mortimer tells the remarkable origin story of a wartime special forces unit that defied the odds. Z Special Unit, one of the most intrepid but arguably the most unsung of Allied Special Forces of the Second World War, waged a guerrilla war against Japan for two years in the south-west Pacific. On some of their 81 operations,...