From the outbreak of war in September 1939 all the way to the smouldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Palestine, Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day, Nijmegen and the crossing of the Rhine, An Englishman at War is a unique first-person account of the Second World War. The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, Stanley Christopher's regiment, went to war as amateurs, equipped with courage but very little else, and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained and most valued armoured units in the British Army.

Their journey through the war, learning through mistakes and tragedy as well as from a determined desire to improve, can, in many ways, be seen to reflect the experience of the British Army as a whole. From Alamein onwards, the Sherwood Rangers were in the vanguard of almost every action in which they took part, and over the course of the conflict, they amassed an astonishing thirty battle honours. Christopherson himself was to rise from a junior subaltern to become the commanding officer of the regiment soon after the D-Day landings. He took part in all thirty battle honours, and collected a Distinguished Service Order, two Military Crosses and an American Silver Star, as well as being Mentioned in Despatches four times. His is an extraordinary story.