91 Products

Did the Normans bring civilization to England and enable stronger links with continental Europe? Was William’s victory the result of supreme strategy – or just luck? As new discoveries have cast doubt on the traditional picture of 1066, Cole reassesses the evidence for the Conquest and its effects. Explaining the background to the invasion, she highlights the long development of English relations with Normans and Scandinavians; describing the aftermath, she considers how the conquerors crushed resistance and exploited the kingdom’s riches.

The colour maps drawn for this account of the 1944 D-Day landings, which includes commentary on operational planning, Europe’s defences, beachhead battles and the Allied break-out from the region, depict military units, their movements, weaponry, and geographical obstacles. There are line illustrations and archival photographs supporting the maps, an Allied High Command hierarchy chart, a complete list of Allied and German divisions, and a glossary of codewords connected with D-Day at the back.

Originally published in 1959, this classic account of the deadlock between German and Allied forces in 1917 analyses the military strategy leading up to, and during, the Battle of Messines and the Passchendaele campaign.

This review of the bitter conflict between Russian and German forces during the Second World War argues that the leaders of both nations made catastrophic errors that shaped the campaign. Following the fighting from the initial swift victories of the Wehrmacht to the fall of Berlin, the analysis reveals how Stalin's initial miscalculations cost him the initiative and how Hitler clung on to a flawed strategy in retreat that inevitably was doomed to failure.

After failing to strike any decisive blow against the Royalists, Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, who commanded the first Parliamentarian army against King Charles I, never achieved military distinction. This account of Essex’s campaigns, which includes analysis of the battles of Edgehill, Lostwithiel and Newbury, reappraises the man and his reputation in the light of his military accomplishments, his strategic influence over the battles, and his loyalty to his men.

This extraordinary collection of 170 photographs, taken surreptitiously by soldiers over the course of 1917 when spirits on the front line were at their lowest, captures not only the physical destruction of the war, but moments of respite away from the shelling when the men could swim, dine and relax. Equally poignant are the excerpts from soldiers’ memoirs which, in describing their own conditions and activities, tell personal stories of hope and, all too often, bewilderment.

When Clive of India and his tiny detachment of army officers and mercenaries defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies in a mango grove near Plassey, he secured all of Bengal and, eventually, the whole of India for the East India Company. Drawing on an extraordinary collection of private papers, this study of the battle and the 13 months of campaigns leading up to it commemorates the men on both sides who fought and died in the conflict.

John Sadler describes the decisive military engagements within Scottish borders that have been most significant in their scale or consequences, from Mons Graupius (84 CE), which marked the Romans’ most northward advance, to the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746. He discusses the battles’ historical contexts and the development of equipment and fighting styles, as well as using detailed battle plans for tactical analyses. New edition.

If much of the attention in Summer 1944 was on Normandy and the progress of the Allies through France, another enormous multinational army was also fighting doggedly further south and facing the last formidable barrier of German defensive positions, the Gothic Line, stretching from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean across mountainous northern Italy. This analysis of a year of fighting on the front tells the story through the varied experiences of 13 men and women from seven different countries.

Britain’s many battlefields bear witness to the dramatic turning points in the nation’s history. This readable guide describes more than 100 engagements from Roman times to 1746, when the last battle on British soil was fought at Culloden. Each self-contained entry charts the events leading up to the conflict, gives a dramatic account of the fighting, and assesses its consequences; and each has a map and practical information for visitors.

Defeat of the British occupying forces by the rebellious Boers at the Battle of Majuba Hill was seen as a military disaster by the British public, the ‘uncivilized’ tactics of the Boers condemned as savage and despicable. This account of Majuba Hill begins with a detailed history of the annexation of Transvaal by the British in 1877, assesses preceding battles and skirmishes, including Bronkhorstspruit and Laing’s Nek, and features battlefield maps, photographs and illustrations.

This handsomely illustrated volume tells the story of one of the greatest battles of all time, examining the strengths and weaknesses of the three leaders, Wellington, Napoleon and Marshal Blücher, the nature of their armies and available weaponry, and the controversies surrounding the French defeat. Featuring journals and letters describing troop movements and conditions during the campaign, this account identifies the generals who made mistakes, and questions whether the victory was really Wellington’s alone.

This volume shows Britain getting ready for battle and illustrates some of women’s wartime roles, including aircraft assembly, WAAF radio technicians and pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary.

In 1814, British troops marched into Washington DC, torched the White House and Capitol, and forced President Madison to flee. This compelling history traces the background, the action and the aftermath of a conflict that would shape the fledgling USA.

‘In 1940 the only major power fighting Germany was Britain. Had Britain collapsed and Europe become Nazified, the future of the West would have been very bleak.’ In this book Robin Prior re-examines a vast range of official, semi-official and private documentary sources to give a full account of events at home and abroad and reassess the crises – the collapse of France, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz – that threatened the nation during the year when Britain fought alone.

Brought to life here by a former Royal Navy captain, the war at sea was fought in three stages: between cruisers overseas; in home waters between rival battle fleets; and, for the first time in any war, under the sea. First published in 1968.

The German aerial assault of the summer of 1940 resulted in a great many Luftwaffe losses over Britain. This collection of photographs shows some of the bombers brought down and crew members that survived during 1940.

Engaged in various theatres around the world, Britain was expanding its influence in the early years of the 19th century, having achieved dominance at sea after the Battle of Trafalgar. This collection of the original despatches from commanders in the immediate aftermath of engagements includes several from Wellington during his campaigns in Portugal and Spain, and from Waterloo, as well as accounts of the attacks on Copenhagen, Spanish territories in South America, the Dardanelles and Mauritius.

Examining the background, strategy and events of the ten-month-long Battle of Verdun, the authors look afresh at key aspects of the fighting including the German deployment of stormtroopers and the use of artillery and aircraft. They also discuss the renaissance of fortress engineering at Verdun which led to the construction of the Maginot Line and other fortifications in Europe before the Second World War, and the development of artillery powerful enough to destroy such forts.

The German operation to invade Russia progressed rapidly in the summer of 1941 but stalled as the siege of Leningrad began and the Red Army launched its Winter Offensive in December. This book selects archive photographs from Russian and German sources depicting the fighting during this first phase of the struggle on the Eastern Front, highlighting the harsh conditions and difficult terrain as well as capturing off-duty moments for the combatants.

Following the defeat of Germany in 1945, the US Army collected a series of military studies of the D-Day invasion by senior German officers. If the accounts are coloured by the officers being at the time captive, and in some cases under the threat of prosecution for war crimes, their immediacy, while memory was still fresh, nevertheless makes them a valuable resource in understanding the Wehrmacht's preparations for invasion and the progress of battle from a German point of view.

The first encounter at sea of the Second World War took place along the South American coast when three British ships inflicted enough damage on the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee to corner it in Montevideo harbour. The captain, encouraged by British misinformation, chose to scuttle his ship rather than face destruction. This account of the famous episode was first published in 1956 and also contains the official despatch from the British commander.

Both Britain and Germany claimed victory in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916; the Royal Navy losing more ships and men but successfully containing the German fleet for the duration of the war. The outcome, its significance and the performance of the commanders during the battle has been debated ever since, and this book provides a picture of how events unfolded and what people thought at the time through official records and despatches, newspaper reports and detailed personal accounts.

The naval battle at Actium, when the future emperor Augustus defeated the forces of Antony and Cleopatra, was perhaps the most significant military engagement in Roman history. Yet many details of exactly what happened on that September day continue to elude scholars. This study of the literary and historical sources offers a fresh examination of the evidence, with close analysis of hitherto unconsidered allusions to Actium in the description of an equestrian engagement in Book Eleven of Virgil’s Aeneid.

Considered something of a sideshow on the Eastern Front in the Second World War, the Crimea was nevertheless strategically significant and the fighting over it more desperate due to the difficulty of access to the peninsula. This collection of archive photographs charts the struggle from the bitter fighting of 1941–2, before Sevastopol fell, to Crimea’s liberation by the Red Army in 1944, preceded by the mass evacuation of Axis troops across the Black Sea.

In 1920, the German 26th Reserve Division produced a commemorative record of its service during the First World War, which included many photographs taken by the men of the division (German soldiers not being subject to the same restrictions on keeping diaries and taking photos as the British). This book reproduces the best of the collection, providing a valuable German perspective on life in the trenches, in the towns behind the lines and on battlefields including the Somme and Arras.

When a Cambridge professor found wiring beneath the floor of his house, he had little idea of the building’s astonishing past. In April 1945, Farm Hall was used to house ten of Germany’s top nuclear scientists captured during the collapse of the Reich. This gripping narrative probes a murky world of espionage to tell how their conversations, bugged by MI6, revealed the extent of the Nazis’ nuclear ambitions, and investigates whether they were kidnapped to thwart not Hitler, but Stalin.

Slapton Sands in South Devon was a good match for the projected landing area of Utah Beach on D-Day and so elaborate rehearsal exercises were set up there in 1944. Drawing on first-hand accounts, this book tells the story of how over 20,000 acres of land was requisitioned, and its residents evacuated and compensated, and describes the various military manoeuvres, including the friendly-fire catastrophe of Exercise Tiger that cost almost 750 lives.

The defending German army faced an overwhelmingly superior force in terms of troop numbers and materiel during the Normandy campaign in 1944, but that did not always mean that the soldiers had respect for their enemy's fighting qualities. This book reveals the attitudes and opinions of Wehrmacht soldiers through contemporary orders, field reports, letters, diaries and PoW interviews, mostly drawn from the intelligence summaries of the First Canadian Army, which also contained material from British and American sources.

With most of Spain overrun by Napoleon’s forces, the Spanish government remained free, but forced to find refuge in the fortress-port of Cádiz, assisted by British warships and troops under the command of Sir Thomas Graham. This study describes the ‘forgotten battle’ when, urged by the Spanish Junta, and with everything to lose, an Anglo-Spanish force met the besieging French army on the heights of Barossa.