The Gun Garden — David Beaty

In the unpredictable maelstrom of war, heroes can come from the unlikeliest places...

Malta, 1942 â€" a thousand miles from friends, isolated, besieged, and slowly being starved into surrender…

Into that hopeless situation fly two Wellington aircraft equipped with long-range radar. One is captained by a dedicated, veteran RAF pilot. The other by Peter Forrester, a hastily trained, carefree twenty-one-year-old.

Their role is to find enemy convoys proceeding at night from Italy to Africa, and to lead a tiny naval force of cruiser and destroyer through the darkness to the unsuspecting target. The fate of a nation depends on their success...

Climaxed by the mounting crescendo of a night battle at sea, this is a delicately balanced novel, caught between extremes of love and war, between guns and gardens.