CONFLICT on two continents in the Second World War is vividly recalled by York author and war historian Charles Whiting in two new books which top up his already amazing total of more than 250 - so far.

He returns to his old stamping ground (or stonking ground, if you prefer) in Paths Of Death And Glory.

In this, the tenth and final volume of the series, he covers the last days of the Third Reich in May 1945. Whiting assembles, from diaries, interviews and battalion journals, the fighting men's individual stories of their bitterly-contested battles from the shores of the Baltic to Austria, making the reader feel what it was like to be there.

Almost every German city had to be fought for and it was only when Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker that the real mass surrenders of the Wehrmacht began.

In Disaster At Kasserine, Whiting switches to North Africa. Here, we find how the feeling that a major US force in North Africa would tip the balance against Rommel's Afrika Korps in 1943 proved badly wrong.

In an over-ambitious plan the 1st (US) Army sailed across the Atlantic straight into the Operation Torch landing in Tunisia. Just how ill-prepared the GI army was and how inexperienced the top brass were became apparent at the Kasserine Pass where they suffered a costly defeat.

It was Rommel's last victory in Africa and the first defeat for General Eisenhower, the new Allied Land Force commander.

Again, Whiting in his typically thorough, yet fast-moving style, puts the reader bang in the picture and proves that these battles of 60 years ago are ageless and still provide a great read.

Updated: 08:46 Wednesday, October 08, 2003