HT201263 iPhone 4 is in recovery mode but iTunes can not restore it.. Says unknown error occurred  (21) HELP!

I've just got back of holiday and while there my phone decided to turn itself off, it would not come back on unless I plugged it into the wall charger, it said that I had to connect it to iTunes, but being on holiday I couldn't.
So when I got home yesterday I plugged it into my laptop and the Apple logo came on, and then went off again, then back on and off again, it was doing this untill I unplugged it. So I put it into recovery mode and it said Connect to iTunes, so I did. It then said that the phone needed to be restored, iTunes started this process, 'extracting software' it said, and then once that was done it said 'preparing iPhone for restore' but then my phone disconnects itself from the laptop and then connects again then disconnects again. Then iTunes comes up with a message saying 'iTunes can not restore this iPhone 'iPhone', a unkown error occured (21)'
I have tried over and over again to try and do this but it keeps coming up with the same.
Does anyone know what's wrong with my iPhone and how I can fix it?
Thanks

And what did the error message say?

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