Top rank

On the night of 13 June 1982, Dave Parr was hit by shellfire on Wireless Ridge. He was 19, a private in the Second Battalion the Parachute Regiment, and had just become one of the 255 British servicemen lost in the Falklands.

Helen Parr, his niece, was only seven at the time. Now an academic at Keele, teaching international relations, she has written a very fine book indeed on the Britain of her childhood, the Paratroopers’ Falklands experience, and the regiment in which her young uncle served.

Formed on Churchill’s initiative, the Paras’ early reputation was forged in the do or die of Normandy in 1944, in particular the doomed battle of Arnhem Bridge in Holland that September, which for many serves as an emblem of Britain’s early and lonely but ultimately triumphant stand against fascism. Charged with operations no other regiment would take on, the Paras have always been a breed apart: ‘Every man an emperor, ready for anything, utrinque paratus.’