Escape from Kabul: The Inside Story

’An important account of one of the defining moments of the modern world’ PETER FRANKOPAN

The evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 will go down in military history as one of the most unexpected events in modern times. In an eerie replay of the disastrous British retreat from Kabul in 1842, coalition troops withdrew from Afghanistan after twenty years of military campaigning. The subsequent collapse of the Afghan government and its army shocked the world, as a resurgent Taliban gathered its forces and swept across the country. Thousands of Afghans who had worked with the allies were left to the meagre mercy of the Taliban.

As the Taliban went door to door to execute ’collaborators’, a small international task force set out on a daring mission to evacuate as many Afghans and their families as possible.

Drawing on a wide range of first-hand accounts - the politicians and officers who planned the trans-continental rescue, the young soldiers who were faced with the unenviable task of keeping a crowd of thousands of desperate people at bay, former interpreters and soldiers of the Afghan Special Forces who made it out - Escape from Kabul is the harrowing true story of Operation Pitting and the Kabul airlift.

Levison Wood is an award-winning author, explorer and photographer, whose books and documentaries have won critical acclaim around the world. Levison is the author of 7 books to date, including Walking the Nile and Walking the Americas, which were both Sunday Times bestsellers, and Walking the Himalayas which was voted Adventure Travel Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. His book Arabia was also chosen by Hudson Books as one of their Top Ten Non-Fiction Titles of 2019 in the USA.

Levison’s passion for adventure and discovering more about indigenous ways of life has taken him to over 100 countries. He served for several years as an Officer in the British Parachute Regiment, including an operational deployment to Afghanistan, where he fought Taliban insurgents in Helmand. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Explorers Club and Visiting Fellow at Cass Business School.

He has presented several documentaries, which have aired around the world, including ’Arabia with Levison Wood’, which was shortlisted for Best Documentary Series at the Broadcast Awards 2020 and his latest series ’Walking with Elephants’, which recounts a trek across Botswana following a herd of elephants to the Okavango Delta. Levison is a passionate conservationist and an ambassador for the charity The Tusk Trust.

Geraint Jones is an author and military historian who served as an infantry soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. His war memoir Brothers in Arms was published in 2019, and his co-written account No Way Out was a Sunday Times bestseller. Geraint has also published several fiction titles, including titles with James Patterson.