his literary prizes include the samuel johnson prize, the wolfston pride for history and the hopland prize temperature literature. not to mention orders and deck indications from various european governments. he is married to writer and biographer artimus cooper whose father was a distinguished and much loved historian who sadly passed away this year. >> the germans are in full and rather undying any identified retreat. can you paint that picture for us and tell us how the planning for what churchill called the all important forward bound in the north got underway. >> it was not just the western front that the germ wand were in retreat. also on the eastern front. operations where the red army had advanced right the way across bella -- to the gates of war saw, on the western front the allies, the british and americans, had rather misjudged the thing. they saw the victory in normandy, this extraordinary charge forward, all the way from the river sein to brussel, so antwerp, sadly just to the port, not to the closing the astoria, not opening that spirally but also they made a big mistak