Merry Christmas from We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Over the next 12 days Al and James are reading extracts from some of their favourite books about the Second World War. Today Rachel Holland is reading an extract from

Burma and Operation Varsity James Holland describes the role of General Slim in turning round the fortunes of the British forces in Burma. Al Murray explains how the airborne success of Operation Varsity was principally built on the lessons learnt

You could volunteer to fly but you couldn’t volunteer to stop. Dr Dan Ellin, of the International Bomber Command Centre, talks to Al and James about the way in which men were judged and treated as they faced the trauma

Two years before the start of the Second World War in the west China and Japan entered into a bloody military conflict which would result in millions of casualties. In the first of a two-part series James Holland and Al