Sir Max Hastings – CHASTISE: The Dambusters Story, 1943 – Rye Arts Festival

Rye Arts Festival is delighted to welcome the bestselling and critically acclaimed military historian, Sir Max Hastings, to talk about his forthcoming new history of the Dambusters Raid.

Operation Chastise, the destruction of the Möhne and Edersee dams in north-west Germany by the RAF's 617 Squadron on the night of 16th/17th May 1943, was an epic that has passed into Britain's national legend.

Here is a dramatic retake on familiar history by a master of the art. Hastings sets the Dams Raid in the big picture of the bomber offensive and of the Second World War, with moving portraits of the young airmen, so many of whom died; of Barnes Wallis; the monstrous Harris; the tragic Guy Gibson, together with superb narrative of the action of one of the most extraordinary episodes in British history.