MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Jimmy Burns updated edition of how Argentina lost the Falklands war

The new edition gives a detailed account of the military planning behind the Argentine invasion

On the 30th anniversary of the invasion of the Falkland Islands Jimmy Burns launches an updated edition of “The Land that lost its Heroes” , How Argentina lost the Falklands war, which draws on unique access to military, diplomatic and intelligence sources in Argetina, the US and the UK plus other key players.

The prize-winning author and journalist Jimmy Burns was the only full time British foreign correspondent to be based in Argentina when the invasion of the Falkland Islands took place on 2 April 1982.

Graham Greene described it as a book “for everyone who wishes to understand the Argentine situation before and after the Falklands war”.

The updated edition of the book winner of the 1987 Somerset Maugham Award for non fiction is fascinating on many levels, plus including eyewitness accounts from the front line.

The new edition gives a detailed account of the military planning behind the Argentine invasion; reveals the inadequate reactions of British diplomacy and the failings of British and US intelligence; exposes the international intrigue and covert military operations of the war on both sides; recounts the personal experiences of British and Argentine soldiers and the inhabitants of the islands; includes  the first ever inside story of the secret missile program which Argentina tried to develop after the war with the help of Middle Eastern countries, and how, once discovered,  it was scuppered by US and British intelligence and finally provides a unique insight into why successive British and Argentine governments have failed to reach agreement over the future of the disputed Islands.

Finally it analyzes a new prescript why in 2012 the government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner launched a new diplomatic and trade offensive over Las Malvinas as the thirtieth anniversary of the war approached.