Wars & Conflicts

As a small club airfield during the 1930s, West Malling was very popular with flyers. Taken over by the RAF in 1939 it became a forward landing airfield to Biggin Hill. Unfinished by the time the Battle of Britain began, it played no operational part...

In this riveting book, Michael Burleigh sets Nazi Germany in a European context, showing how the Third Reich's abandonment of liberal democracy, decency and tolerance was widespread in the Europe of the period. He shows how a radical, pseudo-religious...

'I saw a mass of ME 109s and went up to attack. I looked behind and found three on each side diving to attack me.' Bob Doe, Combat Report 16 August 1940 In June 1940, at the age of twenty, Bob Doe believed himself to be the worst pilot in his squadron...

'Utterly fascinating.' James Holland'First-class... The intense rivalry of Monty and Patton is one of the great stories of the war, and has never been told better.' Andrew RobertsBorn in the two decades prior to World War I, George Patton, Bernard...

Beginning in the broken aftermath of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles that made German recovery almost impossible, Whittock tells not just the account of the men who rose to the fore in the dangerous days of the Weimar republic, circling...

'I took hold of the fence and pressed my face into the wire, asking myself what I had done to be made a prisoner?'On the Indonesian island of Java, eight-year-old Lise enjoys a happy childhood, thousands of miles away from the war raging in Europe. Then,...

Hitler's U-boats fired some of the first shots of the Second World War, going on to threaten the Allies' maritime life lines until the very end of the fighting in Europe. Indeed, the Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign of...

NOW A MAJOR FEATURE DOCUMENTARYDetermined to cover the Syrian regime's brutal crackdown on dissent and the devastating impact of the war on Syria's civilians, veteran photographer Paul Conroy and Marie Colvin,one of the foremost war correspondents of her...

The Army That Never Was: D-Day and the Great Deception tells the remarkable story of the deceptions, hoaxes and misdirections carried out by the Allies ahead of the most pivotal moment of the Second World War - the D-Day invasion.The most audacious of...

Sixty years ago, four men parachuted onto a Norwegian glacier, carrying only the most basic equipment. Their mission was to prevent the Nazi regime from building an atomic bomb. Now wilderness expert Ray Mears tells the true story of this gruelling...

Britain's first-ever wartime fighter plane, the Hawker Hurricane, shot down more enemy planes than any other fighter. It was the true aviation hero of the Battle of Britain.Often eclipsed by the legend and aerial heroics of the Spitfire, the Hurricane...

Primo Levi's account of life as a concentration camp prisoner falls into two parts. IF THIS IS A MAN describes his deportation to Poland and the twenty months he spend working in Auschwitz. THE TRUCE covers his long journey to Italy at the end of the war...

The inside story of one of the most famous of all the 'back rooms' of the Second World War - and of the men and women who worked for it. Conceived by Winston Churchill to circumvent the delays, frustrations and inefficiencies of the service ministries,...

From May 1940, the Children's Overseas Reception Board began to move children to Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand for their own safety during the Second World War. The scheme was extremely popular, and over 200,000 applications were made...

"This is a terrific history of the Seventh Fleet's vital service to the United States in the Vietnam War... remarkably researched and interpreted" - Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, 2011-2015 and Commander Seventh Fleet,...

The Anglo-Irish War has often been referred to as the war 'the English have struggled to forget and the Irish cannot help but remember'. Before 1919, the issue of Irish Home Rule lurked beneath the surface of Anglo-Irish relations for many years, but...

For as long as there have been wars there have been fears about the next war. Where are the new dangers? What is the best defence? How might peace come about? This is the history of how over the last 150 years we have tried - rightly and wrongly - to...

A fully illustrated study of the Nakajima Ki49 'Helen', the twin-engined bomber of the Pacific War, from Japanese aviation expert George Eleftheriou. The Nakajima Ki-49 Donryu ('Dragon Eater'), codenamed 'Helen' by the Allies, was a twin-engined...

A detailed study of the Syrian and Lebanon campaign of World War II. In June 1941, Australian, British, Indian and Free French forces invaded the Vichy French-controlled mandate of Syria and Lebanon. They faced an enemy that had more artillery, tanks...

Unstoppable and deadly, this is the gripping story of some of the most feared soldiers in the warThe daring, courage and skill of the highly-trained men who spearheaded German assaults in the blitzkrieg of 1940, dropping from the air to seize and...

For fans of Darkest Hour and Dunkirk, discover the story of Walter H. Thompson, the man who saved Winston Churchill's life more than once.Walter H. Thompson was Churchill's bodyguard from 1921 until 1945, brought back from retirement at the outbreak of...

Although it escaped bombing raids, Blackpool played an important role in the Second World War as a centre for training - with numerous airfields and factories surrounding the area. This book is the first to offer a dedicated history of the town in the...

'Cynthia Enloe is a force to be reckoned with and utterly tireless. Her work has long spanned intersectional analyses of gender, race and class...she repeatedly questions which things society pays attention to and which we consider insignificant. She is...

From the fury of the Punic Wars to the onslaught of Operation Desert Storm, relive the most famous battles in history in this gripping guide.This military history book takes you on a journey through the battlefields of history, from the ancient world to...

Gritty, but witty, description of life and death on the front line in Afghanistan, by the bestselling author of BULLET MAGNET.Now Zad, Afghanistan: a small unit of British soldiers are beseiged on a hilltop, surrounded by Taliban. There is no way out...

The surrender of the German U-boat fleet at the end of World War II was perhaps the principal event in the war's endgame which signified to the British people that peace really had arrived. This revised, updated and expanded new edition gives career...

'I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.' Becky Sharp is sharp, calculating, and determined to succeed. Craving wealth and a position in society, she charms, hoodwinks, manipulates everyone she meets, rising in the world as she...

'Based on eye-witness accounts, Robert Pike's moving book vividly depicts the lives of the villagers who were caught up in the tragedy of Oradour-sur-Glane and brings their experiences to our attention for the first time.' - Hanna Diamond, author of...

'An extraordinary account of heroism and sacrifice. An unexpected and important story, rivetingly told. Rip roaring stuff. Get this into the paws of the sea dog in your life.' - Griff Rhys Jones 'A book that had to be written' - Let's Talk 'People...

Cutting through the headlines and spin, this is the first book to give us a true picture of the reality on the ground, through the words of the people there - from commanders to intelligence officers, army doctors to ordinary soldiers. Providing...

An extraordinary kind of autobiography in which each of the 21 chapters takes its title and its starting-point from one of the elements in the periodic table. Mingling fact and fiction, science and personal record, history and anecdote, Levi uses his...

On 26 April 1937, in the rubble of the bombed city of Guernica, the world's press scrambled to submit their stories. But one journalist held back, and spent an extra day exploring the scene. His report pointed the finger at secret Nazi involvement in the...

The Women's Land Army was actually founded in 1917, but it was during the Second World War that it attracted the kind of attention which assured its place in the annals of the British war effort. The Services' demands on manpower created a gap which the...

In November 1940, a remarkable prototype aircraft made its maiden flight from an airstrip north of London. Novel in construction and exceptionally fast, the new plane was soon outpacing the Spitfire, and went on to contribute to the RAF's offensive...

Velikiye Luki had been an important Russian fortress city since the 13th century and had become an important rail-hub by the 19th century. In August 1941, the Germans occupied the city of 30,000 during Operation Barbarossa and made it a bulwark on the...

Eighty years on, D-Day The Oral History is a fresh and significant new history of arguably the most important day of the 20th Century.On 6th June 1944, the Allied invasion began. For hours, wave after wave of soldiers, sailors, and airmen crossed the...

Today, Alan Turing is a well-recognised name, but it was not always so. Until the last few years of the 20th century hardly anyone had heard of him or his achievements. All that changed when the British government permitted the story of Bletchley Park...

The Panzer IV programme was started in 1934, forming, alongside the Panzer IIs and IIIs, the schnellen Truppen, the force that was to become the Panzerwaffe. At first, German planners envisioned the tank in a secondary role, but during the invasions of...

For decades the controversy has raged: Was the Pearl Harbor disaster a result of criminal negligence by military officers in the Pacific theater? Was it, as some have claimed, a deliberate plot by the President in Washington? It seems unlikely that a...

A compelling account of the heavily armed and highly mobile Soviet river gunboats which took on the Germans during World War II. Russia's enormous river system has long been its highway and, as early as 1908, the Tsar's armies were developing armoured...