THIS year sees the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, and, as expected, a wide range of new titles are going to land on the bookshelves to commemorate the wartime event that changed the course of history.

"D-Day was an overwhelming success - more than 156,000 Allied soldiers had landed in France. Fewer than 5,000 men had been killed or wounded in the assault on the beaches - the planners of Operation Overlord had expected many more. Hitler's famous Atlantic Wall had crumbled... but it was just the beginning," says Andrew Williams in his book D-Day To Berlin.

Montgomery's plan was a clever deception - the British would batter away at the enemy while the American forces prepared to launch a crushing breakout from the new Allied bridgehead. But progress on the battlefield was slow and within weeks General Eisenhower had begun to lose patience with his land forces commander. The Allied forces were locked in a desperate and costly struggle against a skilful and determined enemy - and the German forces were past masters at defensive tactics, as they had proved in the First World War.

The strains and tensions, rivalries between the Allied commanders, the worries and fears of the troops involved on both sides, are vividly recalled by the author and are given voice in this revealing look at the push from the Normandy coast all the way to Berlin.

Sutton Publishing have also been quick off the mark with their new 14 volume D-Day series, which combines authoritative historical narrative and battlefield tour guides with high quality archive material and full colour photographs and maps.

The first two titles are Battle Zone Normandy: Orne Bridgehead and Battle Zone Normandy: Sword Beach, costing £14.99 each. Other titles out soon are Juno Beach, Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, Villers-Bocage, Battle for Cherbourg, Battle for St Lo, Operation Epsom, Operation Cobra, Battle for Caen, The Road to Falaise and The Falaise Pocket.

Those who want a really accurate and absorbing account of each part of the D-Day landings and subsequent actions in France will find that the books make up a first class history set that it is superb both in quality and quantity.

D-Day To Berlin by Andrew Williams (Hodder and Stoughton, £20).