Martin Gilbert's D-Day is a masterpiece of compression. The ability to distil the bewildering mass of information at his disposal down to this concentrated and compelling narrative, while retaining a powerful sense of the colossal scale of 'Overlord' is a kind of alchemy. Gilbert's craft is a mystery but in some way it is bound up with his unerring instinct for the telling detail, the detail that seems to encapsulate or imply countless other, unnamed details - a technique more common in poetry perhaps. The effect is to leave one with the impression of a book much larger the 220 pages of D-Day.

Gilbert neither glorifies nor bewails the events of early June 1944 but presents the story and supporting statistics with clarity and economy. His language is precise, unadorned; his gaze unblinking: the appalling loss of life among French and Belgian civilian populations during the bombing preparatory to D-Day is faced squarely, the baldly-stated figures falling like a hammer blow in the reader's mind.

Gilbert is fascinatingly detailed on the extraordinary campaign of deception and misinformation surrounding D-Day which, it now appears, was so successful as to have had a substantial effect on the outcome of the invasion. Among others, he describes the work of one Juan Pujol Garcia, code-name Garbo, a double agent known as Arabel to his German controllers, who was instrumental in creating and reinforcing the conviction within the German high-command that the main allied invasion would come in, or north of, the Pas-de-Calais; a conviction so strong that it was maintained until well after the genuine invasion had been mounted in Normandy. (The German command believed this to be a diversion and retained over half a million troops 150 miles to the north awaiting the 'real' invasion, which, of course, never came.)

The use of quotation is sparing, but vivid when employed: from John (now Sir John) Keegan, a boy on the night of the invasion, 'The sky over our house began to fill with the sound of aircraft, which swelled until it overflowed the darkness from edge to edge' and from General Marshal's formal directive to Eisenhower, 12 February 1944, 'You will enter the continent of Europe and in conjunction with the other United Nations undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces'. Has any other individual in history received an order of such oppressive magnitude?

The temptation to mythologise Eisenhower is almost irresistable but as ever Gilbert is on hand with the detail which movingly reveals his flesh and blood humanity: after an impromptu visit to the 101st Airborne on the evening of the invasion, Eisenhower confides in his driver, 'I hope to God I know what I'm doing'.

The many strands of this complex story: the technical challenges solved; the myriad military plans painstakingly devised assembled and co-ordinated, the interplay of intelligence and deception operations; the conflicts of both strategies and personalities; the human suffering and heroism, are brought together here to form a convincing view of a pivotal episode in European and indeed world history. It still, at sixty years remove, has the power to compel humility and gratitude in the reader. Also important and valuable in that it provides a highly accessible record for younger readers who might be deterred by more exhaustively detailed approaches (incidentally, gives a salutary perspective on current political developments in Europe too).