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Slightly off-mint.

After a history of aerial spying, from the American Civil War to the recent Afghanistan conflict, this volume presents an illustrated guide to the manned reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft of Germany, Britain, USSR/Russia and the USA, with discussion of each plane’s design and operations, technical specifications, photographs and artworks.

As a young army officer, the founder of the Boy Scout movement served in military intelligence in Malta. In this book, written in 1915, he describes his adventures, discusses German espionage before and during the First World War, and outlines the basic techniques of spycraft: codes and disguises; how to observe troop movements and evade sentries; and how to conceal secret information in apparently innocent drawings of butterflies and leaves.

Behind the land battles and naval engagements of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain and France fought another, hidden conflict. Drawing on contemporary letters, journals and police reports, this history describes the political intrigue, secret agents, informers, and state-sponsored murders that were part of the attempt to overthrow the French Republic. Its cast includes the forgotten fathers of British intelligence, William Wickham and Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith, and the French general turned British agent, Charles Pichegru.

In the 1870s a German archaeologist, inspired since boyhood by the epics of Homer, set out to unearth the ruins of Troy. This book retells the Trojan War legend alongside the story of Schliemann’s real-life quest.

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.

After the Battle of the Nile in 1798, Sultan Selim III presented Horatio Nelson with a chelengk – a diamond-studded turban ornament, its central star rotated by clockwork. Worn in the admiral's hat, it became his emblem. This book tells the story of its creation, and how it passed down through the family to be exhibited at the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where it was stolen in a 1951 burglary and never seen again.

After the death of Alexander the Great and the fragmentation of his empire, the east Mediterranean world was controlled by the so-called Successor States. The authors analyse the complex conflicts and rivalries among these states during the final decades of the 3rd century BCE – the last generation before Roman intervention in the region – as well as considering Hellenistic military systems and the tactics used in major land and sea battles.

The Vandals, who are best remembered for their sack of Rome in 455 CE, have become synonymous with wanton and barbaric destruction. But who were these people and do they deserve their reputation? MacDowell follows the Vandals’ great migration across Germany, Gaul, Spain and North Africa as they sought a new homeland; he also analyses the evolution of their armies’ tactics and equipment and emphasizes the centrality of Arian Christian beliefs in the tribe’s identity.

Exploring his early flying training as well as his time in France, this memoir describes the perilous life of a combat pilot at a time when there was no heating or oxygen in the open cockpits, no radio communication, no brakes and no parachutes. In the concluding chapter Lee describes his time running a training squadron in 1918 and his disdain for the uniform and rank structure of the newly formed RAF.

Adapting to rapidly evolving equipment, changing tactics and a high turnover of pilots, Lee managed to survive in 46 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, from May 1917 to January 1918, progressing from novice recruit to seasoned flight commander. Through the extensive letters that he wrote to his wife, this volume recounts his combat experiences at Ypres, Messines, Arras and Cambrai, as well as the routines of daily life in the squadron.

The Sri Lankan civil war between Tamils and Sinhalese started in the early 1980s and lasted for almost 30 years. Travelling the island, Subramanian talks to ordinary people on both sides to reveal the scars – social, economic and psychological – left by decades of conflict and terror.

The British Army has been continuously employed, somewhere in the world, since 1945 – despite diminishing significantly in numbers. In this history of post-war Britain, former Chief of the General Staff Richard Dannatt examines affairs of state through the prism of the army's involvement, from managing the end of empire and the troubles in Northern Ireland to the Cold War, the Middle East and the emerging threats of the 21st century.

In 2013, Marcel Belley and Tom Curry drove along the Western Front to photograph some of the war graves and memorials of the First World War. En route the pair recorded images of remnants of barbed wire, munitions and trenches, but their lenses focused mainly on the cemeteries created by the British and British Dominions, France, Belgium, Germany and the United States. The commentary includes discussion of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s decision not to repatriate remains.

Scott Addington uses infographics, fact boxes and photographs to present this concise overview of RAF history, which includes the first military balloon, the design of the roundel insignia, leading aces of the world wars and a list of pilots’ slang. Each entry has played its part in shaping the service, and the selection reflects the innovation, courage and heritage of the world’s first independent air force.

The first significant reorganization of British Army formations took place in 1881, reducing 110 infantry regiments to 69. Since then several further revisions have taken place as well as new units formed. With notes outlining the engagements and events that shaped the Army's history, this reference work provides lineage charts tracing the evolution of all infantry and cavalry regiments from 1660 to the present.

Charles Monro commanded divisions in France during the First World War and ordered the evacuation of Gallipoli in 1915 before being appointed Commander in Chief of India. This biography describes his contributions to the Army and the governance of the Empire.

Henry V’s fleet was remarkable in several ways: four of its ships were the biggest ever seen in English waters; its intense patrols dominated the English Channel; while its shipmasters were organized into an efficient, single body. This study of the navy’s role at a crucial stage in the Hundred Years’ War examines the evolution of the fleet, its crew, weaponry and military strategy, and includes lists of individual ships, shipmasters, and on-board armaments.

This history of China’s military conflicts spans from Genghis Khan’s rule to today’s presidency of Xi Jinping, and includes the Sino-French war, the Boxer Rebellion, the occupation of Tibet and the Korean War. Descriptions of each conflict are written as concise short stories.

In 1981, with the Cold War at its height, Christopher Knowles embarked on the first of 24 train journeys as a tour guide from London to Hong Kong. In this memoir, he recalls travelling on ordinary passenger services through East Berlin, Poland, the Soviet Union and China, describes his eccentric fellow-travellers, and recounts a series of bizarre and sometimes frightening experiences, including being mistaken for a Red Army deserter in Mongolia.

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.

A civil war, the end of slavery and mass immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century caused far-reaching social unrest in America, with race riots, gang violence and organized crime in the eastern cities to rival and exceed the lawlessness of the wild frontier. This study analyses a number of flashpoints including pitched street battles between rival immigrant gangs, the activities of the early mafia and industrial disputes such as the Blair Mountain coal miners' uprising.

The Long Range Desert Group was the first British special forces unit of the Second World War, carrying out deep penetration missions in the North African deserts and beyond. Centred around the unit’s founder, Ralph Bagnold, who in the 1930s explored miles of desert in a Model T Ford, this history of the unit and its operations also recounts some of its most daring missions.

Simon James takes an archaeologist’s approach to the study of Rome’s military history, telling the story of the sword – ‘the literal cutting edge of Roman power’ – from early times to the fall of the western empire. To supplement the battle narratives of ancient historical writers, he explains developments in sword-smithing techniques and military ideology, considers cultural reasons for changes in hardware and tactics and helps the reader to visualize the direct human experience of the ‘myriad individual acts of mayhem’ in battle.

The city of Hu? was of major strategic importance to the US Army in Vietnam, but the January 1968 offensive against the city by the North Vietnamese Army led, as the Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden shows, to the war’s costliest campaign. Slightly off-mint.

In a fresh account of Bannockburn, Cornell places the battle ‘within its wider context as a phenomenon inextricably linked to the political events within Scotland and England in this period’. He examines the internal conflicts in both countries, the leadership of Robert Bruce and that of England’s Edward II and his generals in a thorough reappraisal of why the battle occurred, how it unfolded and how the Scots achieved their extraordinary against-the-odds victory.

At the end of the Second World War, as Germany lay in ruins, the Western Allies looked with alarm towards a new adversary in the east: Stalin’s Russia. The Italian port of Trieste, occupied by Yugoslav troops, was a flashpoint. Like a Cold War thriller, this history charts the destinies of a British SOE officer, an Austrian SS general, an American spy and a teenage Italian female partisan in a true story of espionage, escape and revenge.