A Sinister Twilight: The Fall of Singapore, 1942

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1968. First Printing. Hardcover. good, ex-lib.. 23 cm, 364, maps, index, usual library markings. Noel Barber (9 September 1909 - 10 July 1988) was a British novelist and journalist. Many of his novels, considered exotic, are about his experiences as leading foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail. Most notably he reported from Morocco, where he was stabbed five times. In October 1956, Barber survived a gunshot wound to the head by a Soviet sentry in Hungary during the Hungarian revolution A car crash ended his career as journalist. The fall of Singapore in 1942 is recounted with much material from hitherto unpublished official sources, papers and diaries, and notes written in prison camp.  The Battle of Singapore, also known as the Fall of Singapore, was fought in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II when the Empire of Japan invaded the British stronghold of Singapore-nicknamed the "Gibraltar of the East". Singapore was the major British military base in South-East Asia and was thekeystone of British imperial interwar defence planning for South-East Asia as well as the South-West Pacific. The fighting in Singapore lasted from 8 to 15 February 1942 although this was preceded by two months of British resistance as Japanese forces advanced down the Malaya peninsula. It resulted in the capture of Singapore by the Japanese and the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history. About 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops became prisoners of war, joining 50,000 taken by the Japanese in the earlier Malayan Campaign. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, called the ignominious fall of Singapore to the Japanese the "worst disaster" and "largest capitulation" in British military history.