Their authors would have us believe that the Japanese bicycled unmolested down the jungle trails of Malaya while British commanders refused to prepare even elementary defences. Most famously, the fortress's heavy guns pointed immovably out to sea, leaving the city open to an attack from the north that no one expected. In fact, it was assumed that the invader would take this route. Plans had been made accordingly and the guns could, of course, be turned.

Nonetheless, 30,000 Japanese troops were able to capture a force three times their size. As Colin Smith's new book demonstrates, the defeat was less due to acts of sensational stupidity than a more piecemeal ineptitude. The way in which the enemy achieved air and naval supremacy was the first embarrassment. The Japanese had been thought incapable of manufacturing modern aircraft, and certainly unsuited to piloting them. It was expected that poor eyesight and a susceptibility to altitude sickness would render them a kind of "oriental Italians" who would not put up much of a fight. The RAF's obsolete Brewster Buffalos, and the Hurricanes that followed, were soon swept from the sky by the then peerless Mitsubishi Zero.

A little more thought was given to the sea, and the Royal Navy's newest battleship The Prince of Wales was sent to the theatre as a show of strength. Along with the battlecruiser Repulse, it was sunk by torpedo bombers before it had even engaged an enemy vessel. An unwilling army was left to carry the defence.While the Japanese assault was spearheaded by 200 tanks and the nation's two finest divisions, Singapore's land forces contained no armour at all and only three British battalions at the outset. Smith remarks that the worst the Japanese could expect was the humiliation of having to wait for reinforcements. There was never a chance that the troops commanded by Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival could push the invaders off the island.Smith sets the stage for what, if the outcome were not already known, one would expect to be a heroic and successful endeavour. The British preparation seems detailed only because the author's research has been. Yet, as Churchill lamented, they could still have put up a better fight.