When Jenny Simpson married she joined a unique band of women – the SAS wives – and entered a world of secrecy and danger that few outside it could begin to imagine.

How many wives have to learn to live for months not knowing where their husband is, or what kind of danger he might be in – from IRA terrorists he is stalking, Argentinian or Iraqi soldiers, a faulty parachute or a dangerous training mission gone wrong? How many women could live a life in which they must check their car every morning for bombs, knowing that the IRA has their name and address? When every stranger might be an enemy and even neighbours don’t know their true identity?

Jenny nursed her husband Ian through malaria caught in the jungles of the Far East and through the traumas of seeing his fellow soldiers die in the Falklands. She shared with him the burden of his undercover work in Northern Ireland. She grieved with friends whose husbands died in combat and rebelled against the strict rules of behaviour expected of an SAS wife. She was one of the few women brave enough to take up an offer to go into the Killing House and learn for herself some of the tricks of her husband’s trade.

Biting the Bullet gives a woman’s eye view of the SAS – the rivalry and betrayal behind the bravado and the camaraderie, the intense pressure that so often leads to domestic violence and marital break-up, a life that is at once exhausting and exhilarating. It is also the story of a passionate and fiery relationship that survived against incredible odds, an enduring love that kept two people connected from the small-town world of Hereford to the jungles of Belize, the bleak mountain tops of the Falklands and the deserts of Iraq.