WHAT BOOK would military historian Damien Lewis take to a desert island?

. . . are you reading now?

I’m finding it hard to hold a book, as I’ve broken my wrist and it’s in plaster — I was boxing. I should know better at my age, but my two teenage boys got me into it! So I’ve downloaded Yuval Noah Harari’s Special Operations In The Age Of Chivalry, 1100-1550, onto my Kindle.

Written in 2007, before the author became famous with his bestseller Sapiens, this is his gripping treatise on covert operations, espionage, assassination squads and behind‑the-lines missions in the Middle Ages.

The clandestine ops were aimed chiefly at killing or capturing key iconic leaders — kings and princes — or their fortified castles. These tales of bluff, trickery, disguise and deception rival anything from the modern era. As history teaches us, nothing is ever really new . . .

. . . would you take to a desert island?

Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking With Destiny, simply because I’ve dipped in and out of it but have yet to find the time to immerse myself in this 1,000-page masterpiece.

I re-read one of Churchill’s speeches recently and was struck by it so powerfully. On June 4, 1940, as the last of the little ships steamed away from Dunkirk, he hailed the rescuing of so many from ‘the jaws of death and shame, to their native land’, adding a trenchant reminder: ‘We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.’ We owe so much to that man.

. . . first gave you the reading bug?

It may sound cliched — but it was The Lord Of The Rings. I can remember as clear as day curling up on a chair one winter, aged 12, and immersing myself in that wonderful tale of Orcs and Elves and Hobbits (pictured), Mount Doom and Sauron, and good versus evil. I read it cover-to-cover in a matter of days, gazing out over West Dorset’s rolling hills and dark forests through my family home’s French windows, imagining it all for real.

. . . left you cold?

Six Amis Viendront Ce Soir, by Gilbert Sadi Kirschen, simply because it’s in French, and my French isn’t good enough to have got through it. But it’s a potentially gripping story of the Belgian SAS in action in World War II around Arnhem. A true tale of desperate heroics, it left me frustrated, because the English edition is almost impossible to find, so it feels to me like a lost piece of history. I may simply have to commission a translation! 

• Damien Lewis is the author of SAS: Italian Job, published by Quercus and out in paperback on May 30 at £7.99