A few people have recommended these to me and I had chance to catch some on a flight recently and they are quite good... I thought I'd pass the recommendation on.

Too often historical portraits glorify the extremism of the partisans whose goals were ultimately successful in a given conflict. Here a more complicated picture is painted ... the fact of conflict is mourned in victory and in defeat, as a tragedy and a failure, and a course of events which the individual characters don't have the power to turn, but only to manage through.