The thrilling story of how SOE-trained commandos destroyed the Nazis' nuclear-weapons programme in one of the most daring - and successful - raids of World War II.

It''s 1942 and the Nazis are racing to build an atomic bomb. They have the physicists, but they don''t have enough ''heavy water'' - essential for their nuclear designs. For two years, the Nazis have occupied Norway, and with it the Vemork hydroelectric plant, the world''s sole supplier of heavy water. Under threat of death, its engineers push production into overtime. For the Allies, Vemork must be destroyed. But how could they reach the plant, high in a mountainous valley? The answer became the most dramatic commando raid of the war: the British SOE brought together a brilliant scientist and eleven refugee Norwegian commandos, who, with little more than parachutes, skis and tommy guns, would destroy Hitler''s nuclear ambitions.

Based on exhaustive research and never-before-seen diaries and letters, The Winter Fortress is a compulsively readable narrative about a group of young men who survived the cold of a Norwegian winter and evaded the clutches of the Gestapo, to save the world from destruction.

At times The Winter Fortress reads with the pace of a thriller ? what emerges most strongly is the admiration for the valour of the ordinary soldiers' The Spectator.