Peter Lamb

The Peter Lamb novels follow a British officer and his small unit through two of the most disordered Allied campaigns of the early Second World War. The Black Jackals begins during the collapse of France in 1940, where retreat, civilian casualties and broken communications force Lamb to make decisions without the certainty normally provided by a stable chain of command.

Jackals’ Revenge moves the survivors into Greece and Crete in 1941, placing them among Commonwealth troops, Greek partisans, civilians and irregulars as another campaign gives way to evacuation. The two books concentrate on command under defeat: Lamb’s men are repeatedly asked to preserve discipline and moral judgement when strategy has failed and survival itself has become uncertain.