Speed reading : at war

23 July 2026, The Tablet

The Secret Code Breakers is an unsparing portrait of what it was like to be black in 1950s America, subject to a daily diet of overt racism and discrimination.

“Unbeatable, Unbearable” is the apt subtitle of Montgomery (Bloomsbury, £25; Tablet price £22.50), Gary Mead’s biography of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. As a general he was (nearly) unbeatable, meticulously prepared, decisive, careful, loved by his troops and the iconic victor of Alamein. Unbearable describes his private persona: vain, spectacularly rude, publicity-seeking, lacking in empathy, and a man who made lifelong enemies, especially of the Americans, for whom he could not disguise his contempt.

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