All is fair in love and war...
First published in 1988, it is a tale of two brought together by a drunken brawl in Oxford in 1937. Anthony Marvell and Frido von Arzfeld found friendship even as the threatening clouds of war were gathering over Europe. Then their families-sisters, cousins- found love against a background of growing hate and strident war cries.

From the false idyll of pre-war England and Germany, through the desperate fall of France in 1940, across the ravaged mountains of North Africa, to the savage carnage of Stalingrad, the Marvellls and the von Arzfelds played their parts in the war and saw the bonds that had united their families put the final test.