The Viney Agency

ROBERT LYMAN

Robert LymanRobert Lyman was born in New Zealand and educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, Australia.  He was an officer in the British Army for twenty years, being commissioned into the Light Infantry from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, in April 1982.  He has a First Class Honours degree in History from the University of York; Masters degrees in Strategic Studies (University College of Wales, Aberystwyth), War Studies (King’s College, London) and Military Studies (Cranfield).  He is a graduate of the Joint Services Command and Staff College.  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2009.  A critically acclaimed historian, his interest to date has been the experience of both warfare and of military command during the Second World War, producing narrative studies that explore campaigns in the Middle East, Far East and North Africa.

For more information visit www.robertlyman.com

LATEST BOOK: OPERATION SUICIDE: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF THE COCKLESHELL RAID

Robert LymanDuring the Second World War, it is hard to imagine a situation where the British High Command could think that one of the only ways they could attack Hitler was to send ten canoeists with limpet mines to paddle one hundred miles up the Gironde estuary, in the middle of winter, in an attempt to sink German blockade ships in Bordeaux harbour. Yet this is precisely what happened in 1942. The man who gave the go-ahead for the audacious commando raid - Lord Louis Mountbatten, head of Combined Operations - fully anticipated that all ten men would die in the attempt. Mountbatten wasn't far wrong - two ripped their collapsible canoes as they were manhandling them out of the submarine; two drowned when their canoes capsized entering the Gironde estuary; and a further six were captured by the Germans and later executed. By complete chance, the two canoeists who managed to escape - Major 'Blondie' Hasler and Marine Bill Sparks - stumbled into the arms of the French resistance. Once in their care, Hasler and Sparks made their way across France and into Spain, crossing the Pyrenees in the company (though they did not know it) of a Gestapo agent intent on bringing down the resistance network. Operation Suicide will be the first account of this enthralling raid for over fifty years. In utilizing primary source material, including detailed German records captured by the British in 1944 (which remained censored until 1976), Robert Lyman brings to life one of the most courageous and dramatic events to take place in the darkest days of the Second World War. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Longest Siege: Tobruk and the Battle for Africa, 1941Pan Macmillan, 2009. The Generals: From Defeat to Victory Leadership in Asia 1941-45 Constable and Robinson, 2008.Slim, Master of War, Constable and Robinson, 2004. First Victory, Britain’s Forgotten Struggle in the Middle East, 1941Constable and Robinson, 2006. Iraq 1941: The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad, Osprey Publishing, 2006. Contributing chapter to The Challenges of High Command: The British Experience Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Forward to David Rooney’s Stilwell The Patriot, Greenhill Books, 2005.