Military

'The Home Guards are an attacking force lying in wait for, and ready to destroy, and enemy who dares to set foot on out shores'. The Home Guard has been immortalised in British culture in the TV series "Dad's Army". Formed by men not eligible for active service - too old, too young, in reserved occupations vital to the war ef... read more

When British and American forces invaded Iraq in April 2003, their intelligence operations got to work looking for the WMD their governments had promised us were there. They quickly realised no such weapons existed. Instead they become faced with an ever-increasing spiral of extremism and violence that was almost impossible t... read more

A heartbreaking and compelling WWII story of what war means for one young man. Set just after the Normandy invasion, Articles of War is the story of Heck, an American GI who has recently arrived from Ohio. Utterly inexperienced as a soldier, Heck is paralyzed with fear during his first firefight. Desperate to get away ... read more

Operation "Totalize I" was arguably the finest feat of Allied armoured action in two world wars; at the same time it is arguably the least studied and publicized. On 7 August 1944, the Canadian Army, reinforced with British Army units, sent four armoured columns south of Caen to close the Falaise gap. Driving through the nigh... read more

A comprehensive A-Z guide to warfare from classical times to the present, including the social, political, technological, and economic background of major conflicts. Entries cover people, weapons, and equipment, campaigns and battles, strategy, tactics, and logistics, and include topics as diverse as animals in the military a... read more

The history of maritime warfare in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from one of the field's leading experts.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the rise of oceanic battle-fighting sail navies, which developed into instruments of worldwide strategic power. Spain, France, Holland and Britain were ... read more

Immediately after the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943, Mussolini was deposed and the new Italian government switched sides. The German occupying forces swiftly freed Il Duce and ruthlessly disarmed the Italian Army; and from then until the end of the war in April 1945 Italian troops fought on both sides - with the ... read more

What happens to the elite, close-knit soldiers of Australia's Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment after they leave the world of special forces? For some, there are highly paid jobs in the world's war zones and trouble spots protecting global corporations from terrorism, sabotage and violence. Others become powerful government ... read more

This is the history of the best Allied fighter-destroyer of World War I and the pilots who flew it. Numerous ace teams earned the 'Biff' grudging respect from its German opponents, as the crews operated the plane not as a standard two-seater, but as a single-seat with a 'sting in the tail' in the form of a rear gunner with a ... read more

Highly readable and engaging first-hand account of a desperate personal battle for survival.

Born in Liverpool in 1921, Jim McLoughlin joined the Royal Navy in 1939, serving aboard the battleship HMS Valiant during the Norwegian and Mediterranean campaigns. He was returning home on leave in September 1942 aboard... read more

The heart-stopping account of a life spent fighting the bombmakers by the bestselling author of Eight Lives Down. Bosnia...Northern Ireland...Iraq...Afghanistan...For the past twenty years, some of the most dangerous places on earth. And for Major Chris Hunter, just some of the places where he has defused bombs in his ceasel... read more

It's July 1943. Frederick Mayer, a German-born Jew is recruited to secret operations unit, the OSS. Along with 4 other German-Jews, he volunteers for behind-enemy-lines operations. All have family members in concentration camps. All want revenge. Mayer and his comrades are dropped into the 'Alpine Redoubt' area of Austria, wh... read more

Their mission was straightforward - to set up an Al Qaeda observation post in the south-eastern mountains of Afghanistan. No-one was expecting any difficulties. Instead three men - a Navy SEAL, an Air Force Combat Air Controller and an Army Ranger platoon commander - were pinned down by hostile fire on top of Takur Ghat moun... read more

'In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We w... read more

During the Second World War the air forces and pilots of the countries allied to Germany played a greater role than hitherto conceded by historians.

The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that u... read more

Sent by Germany on a suicide mission to the far side of the world, the warship Wolf was a formidable and ingenious commerce-raider. Her task was to inflict maximum destruction on Allied shipping using all the latest technology of warfare - torpedoes, mines, cannons, smokescreens, wireless receivers, even a seaplane. It was an... read more

In February 1945, British and American bombers rained down thousands of tons of incendiaries on the city of Dresden, creating one of the greatest firestorms in history. Their bombs killed an estimated 25,000 people, and wiped one of the most beautiful cities in Europe from the map. The controversy that erupted shortly afterwa... read more

The Battle of Midway in the central Pacific, on the morning of June 4, 1942, marked a dramatic turning point in the Second World War, when Allied forces seized the upper hand from the Axis powers. Lincoln Prize winner Craig Symonds offers an account of the Battle from a global perspective, as well as of the first six months of the war.

In 1940 a group of artists, sculptors, film makers, theatre designers and set painters came together to form the Camouflage Unit. Led by Major Geoffrey Barkas and including among their number the internationally renowned stage magician Jasper Maskelyne, the unit's projects became a crucial battlefield weapon. At the siege ... read more