SAS Great Escapes by Damien Lewis

SPOTLIGHT ON:

SAS Great Escapes:

Seven Great Escapes Made by Real Second World War Heroes

 by Damien Lewis

An Audible Audiobook – Original recording

Released exclusively on Audible on 28th May 2020. 

Available to pre-order HERE

for £13.12 or 1 credit.

Audible, the world’s leading provider of spoken-word entertainment, has secured worldwide English language audio rights to SAS Great Escapes: Seven Great Escapes Made by Real Second World War Heroes from internationally bestselling author, filmmaker, and former war reporter, Damien Lewis.

A heart-in-the-mouth real-life thriller, SAS Great Escapes is a fresh look at the most audacious escapes the SAS made during the Second World War.

Marking the first audio-exclusive from the SAS’s master chronicler and No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author, Damien Lewis, who spent twenty years reporting from the world’s war and conflict zones, SAS Great Escapes is white-knuckle listening of the highest calibre. 

From the mountains of Italy, to the deserts of Africa, SAS Great Escapes explores seven of the most dangerous and daring escapes during WWII by heroes who epitomise the bravery, esprit de corps and daring do of Britain’s finest elite fighting force. 

Damien Lewis is the author of over fifteen books including fiction and non-fiction (spanning military history, biography and memoir), and is published in more than thirty languages. His bestselling account of the SAS’s attempt to rescue British forces in Sierra Leone, Certain Death, is currently being produced as a film by the team that made Layer Cake, X Men and Snatch, while his fictional thriller, Cobra Gold, is being developed as a Hollywood film by Safady Entertainment (Machine Gun Preacher), with the production team behind Avatar.

Damien Lewis, author of SAS Great Escapes commented: “Working on an Audible Original has been a great new adventure for me, just as I hope SAS Great Escapes brings tales of incredible adventure and derring-do from WWII to a wider audience. The stories are better than fiction – you could not make up such epic escape and evasions, or the characters involved. A gift to author and publisher alike!”

PRAISE FOR DAMIEN LEWIS’ BOOKS:

'Reveals a true story of British courage and daring.' - The Sunday Times

'Riveting.' - Richard & Judy Show

'A gripping thriller,' - The Mail on Sunday

'Reveals the horror,' - Sky News

'Powerful, harrowing and brave … A triumph,' - The Economist

'Mesmerising,' - Vogue

'Compelling,' - FHM

About the author:

Damien Lewis spent twenty years reporting from the world’s war and conflict zones: the Balkans, Kosovo, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, South and Central America, Syria, Iraq and others. 

For a decade he filed stories with the Frontline News Agency, and he is a founding Member of London’s Frontline Club (named after the agency). In the course of his work he met, filmed with and interviewed warlords, child soldiers, genocidal leaders, victims, aid workers, rebels, priests, presidents, corporate leaders, soldiers and spies. 

For several years running he was nominated for what is arguably the British war-reporter’s accolade of choice – The Rory Peck Awards, named after the British journalist of that name who was killed on assignment. A personal friend of the Peck family, Lewis won a host of other awards for his frontline news reporting. As with many of those who choose to work at the most risk-laden end of the profession, he remained resolutely freelance – filing for top news networks (BBC, CNN, ITN, Channel 4, ZDF and others) but never wanting to have his wings clipped. 

He witnessed a number of friends and colleagues injured or killed in the line of their work. In 2000 he suffered a spinal injury and underwent major surgery, which entailed a year in rehabilitation and recovery. During that time he surfaced from the crazed reality of the profession that had claimed him, and crawled his way back to the ‘normal’ world; to the light. He had had little idea how deep down he had gone or how dark his life had become. 

He wrote his first book during recovery – Slave, with escaped Sudanese slave Mende Nazer – which evolved out of the last news assignment he had been working on. Slave was an international bestseller, it was translated into thirty-six languages and was made into the film, I Am Slave. He has since written a host of bestsellers and has rowed back more or less completely on the frontline reporting work.

In 2003 he wrote his first book about elite military operations, Operation Certain Death, which was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. Lewis’s elite forces books Bloody Heroes and Fire Strike 7/9 were Sunday Times top ten bestsellers, and Zero Six Bravo, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller. 

In 2014 Lewis wrote his first book about elite military operations in WWII – Churchill’s Secret Warriors, which was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller, and is presently being made into a movie, by Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Paramount Pictures. Lewis has had many of his other books optioned as films. Operation Certain Death is being produced as a movie by the team that made Layer Cake, X Men and Snatch. His military book, Cobra Gold, is being developed as a Hollywood movie by Safady Entertainment (Machine Gun Preacher), using the production team behind the mega blockbuster Avatar, amongst other films, and his recent elite forces book Operation Relentless is being developed as a US TV drama series by Entertainment One.

About Audible:

Among the acclaimed performers who have narrated works of literature for Audible are Zachary Quinto, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lily Collins, Emma Thompson and Jesse Eisenberg. Audible Studios has won a Grammy Award, for its production of Janis Ian’s memoir Society’s Child, and has also been recognised with the Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year, for Colin Firth’s performance of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. 

Audible invented and commercialised the first digital audio player in 1997, and has since been at the forefront of the explosively growing audiobook download segment. On average, Audible members listen to Audible content for 2 hours a day. In 2018, Audible customers downloaded nearly 3 billion hours of content.