Snow and Steel will be a huge reassessment of Hitler's last great throw of the dice: 'The Battle of the Bulge', the battle for the Ardennes 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. This is an utterly fascinating five weeks when for a time it looked like Hitler had outflanked the allied armies pushing toward the Rhine and might just throw them back to the Normandy beaches. It is also the context for the catastrophic events at Bastogne depicted so graphically in Band of Brothers .

For military history fans this is one of those touchstone battles of the second world war, written by an author with a fast growing, world-wide reputation. Peter will use primary archival material and personal interviews to write a controversial, commercial, landmark book.