Webinar
Special Forces Hero – Anders Lassen VC, MC**.
On-demand
Danish author Thomas Harder talks about his latest book, Special Forces Hero – Anders Lassen.
Until the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940 nineteen-year-old Anders Lassen had no interest in the War. Yet over the next five years he became a Special Forces legend winning the Military Cross three times.
In April 1945, now a major aged 24, Lassen was killed in action at Lake Comacchio in Northern Italy, where his gallantry earned him a posthumous Victoria Cross.
In addition to telling Lassen’s story and discussing his wide-ranging research, Thomas will talk about the birth of the British special forces, the war in the Eastern Mediterranean and Greece, and how the actions of a very small group of men on the periphery of the ”real” war were actually an integral part of much larger schemes.
The session will be moderated by Wayne Harber, OBE K, Chairman, Anglo-Danish Society.
Event Partners: Anglo-Danish Society, Danish-Scottish Society, Danske Kvinder i England, Den Danske Garderforening i Storbritannien , The Danish Church in Hull, Den Danske Kirke i London, Danish-UK Association, and Pen & Swords Books.
Thomas Harder
Author, conference interpreter, literary translator, lecturer
Born in Copenhagen, 1959; Italian-Danish family; bilingual upbringing.
MA in Italian and History (University of Copenhagen 1987), Conference Interpreter (Copenhagen Business School 1988).
Thomas Harder is the author of 20 books on Italian subjects, and four WWII biographies. Thomas Harder has translated works by, among many other authors, Saman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, and, most recently, Giovanni Boccaccio’s medieval classic Decameron. In addition to writing and translating, Thomas Harder works as freelance conference interpreter. Thomas Harder has received a number of Danish, Swedish, and Italian awards for his historical research and writing and for his literary translations. He lives in Copenhagen with his wife.
Colonel Wayne Harber, OBE
Wayne was born in Papua New Guinea, educated in London and has a degree in Politics.
He spent 33 years in the Army with the Queen’s Regiment, Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (PWRR) and the Royal Irish Regiment. His career covered a wide range of employment including battalion command, logistics, recruiting, officer selection and intelligence appointments. He served in Gibraltar, England, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, South Sudan and Iraq. He received three UK operational awards: MBE (1991); OBE (1997); QCVS (2011).
Having left the Army, he took up the appointment of PWRR Regimental Secretary in the Tower of London, retiring in January 2018. He was made a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe in 2013.
He has a keen interest in Ireland, is Chairman of the Anglo-Danish Society and Secretary of a group of Gulf War veterans, the Blackadder Association.