If there is a wartime scenario that we will never forget, it is the Normandy invasion. The vast armada that unleashed thousands of soldiers on to the beaches under a hail of German bullets is as vivid today as it was 65 years ago.

A time to remember, then, with a book that dusts away any lingering cobwebs of history and portrays the nightmare desperation of June, 1944, with a literary passion that matches the tragic grandeur of the battlefield.

Antony Beevor’s D-Day (Viking, £25) is a book of tremendous power, brilliant in its analysis of the command of the assault and the soldier’s role in it. It is, above all, fearlessly honest, with as searing an account of Omaha as one is ever likely to read. As many died during those heroic days as the Germans and Soviets on the eastern front. While the landings were immaculately planned, aided by a weather-wise window of opportunity, the subsequent push to Paris was unexpectedly hazardous and costly in the hedgerow battles with the Panzers.

Although there were moments of chivalry, the Germans sometimes had no mercy for prisoners, while Allied shells killed French civilians by the hundreds. Beevor’s narrative haunts with the same parade of savagery depicted in his earlier books on Stalingrad and Berlin. The Allies won by speed, deception and ultimately Hitler’s defensive failures. Beevor captures the over-riding sense of tension among the commanders — Eisenhower, Montgomery, Patton and, of course, Churchill — while the veterans who survived may thank God for their deliverance, as they waded ashore, brave or bewildered, crying or cursing.

With great military detail and highly constructive relief maps, Overlord: The D-Day Landings (Osprey, £20) by Ken Ford and Steven J. Zalogo is a source of inspiration on the planning and application of the invasion, including the airborne assault to capture bridges behind enemy lines. Many parachutists were dropped in the wrong zones, providing another human aspect to the multiple drama about to unfold on the beaches.

This book, as with all titles by this Oxford publisher, is laden with clear-sighted technical data. It has chapters on the individual actions, highlighted by splendid art work. Every operation in this “last great set-piece battle of the Western world” is embroidered with a graphic cloak.

Despite the dangers, one man was desperate to witness the invasion. Churchill had the vision and the egotism for it and fought a personal battle to be on a ship on the fringes of the fleet action. He did not succeed. Eisenhower was concerned for his safety, with considerable risks from mines, air attacks, torpedoes and possibly shore batteries. In Warlord: Churchill at War 1874-1945 (Allen Lane, £30) Carlo D’Este, who has written an earlier book on Normandy, quotes Admiral Cunningham recording that the Prime Minister was “very worked up about Overlord and was really in a very hysterical state.” War and soldiering were in Churchill’s blood, claims D’Este, and this is a monumental book on his military life, following his fortunes from the the North West Frontier through the cavalry charge at Omdurman, the sieges of the Boer War and the failure of the Gallipoli campaign (as First Lord of the Admiralty) through to his towering performance as Britain’s leader in the Second World War.

Normandy gave him the oppportunity finally to storm Hitler’s fortress and D’Este offers a stirring reflection of the suspense involved in the “great crusade”.

* Antony Beevor will talk about his book at the Randolph Hotel, Oxford, on Tuesday, June 16, from 7-9pm. He is also at Chipping Norton Town Hall on Thursday, June 18, at 7.30pm.