If you've seen ‘The Longest Day’ as the movie you're missing the point, really. Cornelius Ryan's work is far more compelling for it being based on the experiences of real people whose actions impacted not only European but world history (even if the movie drew largely from this tome). The journalistic account is not built solely around an engaging chronology of events, but the over-arching human experience. Participants from both sides of the conflict were interviewed and Ryan magnificantly weaves their personal reminiscenes into the dry detail of the offical record, and does so with great empathy. Replete with illustrations and a wide-ranging bibliography (plus occasional footnotes) it is worthy of not just a read but a re-read (which I did one day after the first, furious conclusion – something not too hard to do when one realises it is not actually that long a work). We all know how D-Day came out, but, if I haven't made it clear so far, this is a human story far more than a war one. The words ‘classic’ and ‘iconic’ are thrown around far too frequently these days; they would not be out of place here.