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The 'Warburg Wire Job' was an audacious escape plan by 40 British, Australian, New Zealand and South African POWs from Oflag VI-B in Warburg, Germany. With the camp lights fused, the prisoners laid scaling ladders constructed from bed boards over the high perimeter fence and 28 made it across. Mark Felton's history tells the story of the planning and execution of the breakout and the stories of the escapees' attempts to evade recapture and return home.

Geoffrey Page was shot down and badly burned in 1940 but was back flying by 1942. His biography, first published as Tale of a Guinea Pig, details his experiences as a fighter pilot as well as post-war campaigning.

Tim Vigors' memoir recounts his early life and his wartime experiences, from flying fighters during the Battle of Britain and in the Far East to being shot down and badly burned in northern Malaya.

In 1939, the first attempts of the government to bolster morale with poster campaigns were largely ineffective but as the war progressed, propaganda became more sophisticated, using contemporary design, memorable slogans and humour to inform and direct the public. This analysis draws on the collection of the Imperial War Museum and explores such classic campaigns as 'Dig for Victory' and 'Make Do and Mend'.

Pet owners were advised in 1939 that destroying their cats and dogs would be kinder than allowing them to face the Blitz. Later in the war family dogs were recruited into service as guards and mine detectors. This book investigates the wartime challenges for domestic pets and their owners, from bombed-out cats rescued from the rubble to the dogs that parachuted into France on D-Day.

The final effort of the Second World War against Japan is remembered as mainly an American affair, but the British fleet was there too and British airmen flying from carriers, mostly in leased American Corsair planes. This book recounts those last days of the Pacific War through the eyes of the Royal Navy pilots who flew hundreds of missions over Japan and in the face of desperate Japanese kamikaze attacks during the summer of 1945.

In this study of Winston Churchill and the small group of men – the 'team of rivals' – that he chose to help him guide Britain through the grave crisis it faced in May 1940, Schneer examines Churchill's leadership and the relations between the War Cabinet ministers – among them Eden, Beaverbrook, Bevin, Attlee, Morrison and Stafford Cripps. He also looks beyond the war to the Cabinet's response to public expectations after six years of hardship – domestic issues which demanded a new kind of leadership.

Edited, with notes and commentary by Brian R Sullivan, this is the memoir of Margherita Sarfatti, the Jewish woman who was Mussolini’s lover, adviser, benefactor and confidante from 1912 to 1930, and who escaped Italy and the dictator’s anti-Jewish regulations in 1938.

Many Western politicians, from Jimmy Carter to Tony Blair, have expressed the view that world peace depends on a solution to the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict. This meticulously researched, forcefully argued book proposes that the roots of the conflict lie in Soviet ambitions in the Middle East. From Stalin onward, Russia has fostered Israel’s opponents, a policy continued today by Vladimir Putin via his proxies in Syria and Iran.

In 1943, Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet met to discuss the opening of a new front – not on the beaches of Normandy or in the jungles of Burma, but amid the blizzards and glaciers of the Antarctic. Operation Tabarin tells the remarkable story of this secret mission to establish British sovereignty in the region, describing how the expedition laid the foundations for decades of government-sponsored scientific research – and would eventually lead to the Falklands War.

Astrology, magic, political warfare and black propaganda, Commander Ian Fleming’s meeting with the ‘Beast’ Aleister Crowley... Nicholas Booth tells a surreal tale that begins with British Intelligence wanting to know whether Adolf Hitler was being advised by astrologers and ends with Rudolf Hess parachuting into Scotland. Using declassified files, Booth explains some of the peculiar events and personalities of the secret war in 1941, when Britain’s situation was desperate and even an occult straw seemed worth clutching.

Offering a German view of the Russian and North African fronts in the Second World War, this book comprises previously unpublished photographs taken by German soldiers, with detailed captions by two military historians.

In April 1945, a score of British and American women emerged from the ‘Women’s Hell’ of Ravensbrück concentration camp, kept alive by the willpower of one woman, Mary Lindell, Comtesse de Milleville. Movingly supported by personal testimonies, this book tells the remarkable story of this courageous woman, already a heroine of the First World War, who smuggled out a list that belied German claims that they had no British or American prisoners, and saved the lives of her fellow inmates.

‘Born on the wrong side of a river at the wrong time in history’, Luise Urban tells how, as Germans living east of the Oder-Neisse line in 1944–5, her family was dispossessed and slaughtered as the Soviet army advanced.

The 137th Infantry Brigade was raised in 1939 when Territorial Army reservists were mobilized. Although designated for labour duties, the 'digging divisions' found themselves called into action and delayed the German advance during the Battle of France at a high cost in casualties. This book uses diaries and personal accounts as well as official reports to tell the story of how the unprepared troops' sacrifice helped enable the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk.

During the Second World War over 10,000 Germans and Austrians who had fled Nazi tyranny served in the British forces. This is an account of how they returned to Germany with the Intelligence Corps to 'denazify' and help rebuild the country.

This analysis of the elite German military unit that developed from Hitler's personal bodyguard considers its organizational structure, notable officers and combat tactics as well as exploring its equipment, uniforms, insignia and decorations.

Arming a volunteer militia of over 1.5 million men in 1940 was no easy task and logistical problems and the use of improvised weapons and unfamiliar imported rifles gave the Home Guard a reputation for ineffectiveness that was later ingrained by the television comedy Dad's Army. This study examines the range of weaponry supplied to the force between 1940 and 1944, assessing its true military effectiveness and considering the process by which false perception can become accepted as historical fact.

Recognizing that truth is often the first casualty of war, military historian Ian Garden examines the way both Axis and Allies manipulated news coverage of the war to boost the morale of their populations. Extensively illustrated with historic photographs and newsreel stills, this absorbing book analyses key incidents and contemporary sources to show how both sides doctored the news, exaggerating enemy casualties while minimizing their own, and giving false impressions about the success or failure of missions – and even whole campaigns.

Drawing on ‘Barney’ Barnfather’s personal log book, Mansfield presents a detailed history of the Spitfire pilot’s escapades in air battles over France, Malta, North Africa and Italy, 1941 to 1945.

Malta was under constant threat from Italian and German attacks in the early years of the Second World War. This book reproduces the unofficial diary of 185 Squadron, RAF, recording every operation, and the pilots' personal observations, between 1941 and 1943.

While her husband was serving as a British Army captain, Evelyn Shillington travelled with him whenever she could. She kept a regular diary starting with their arrival home from Hong Kong in 1935, through the turbulence of the Second World War, to a stint in post-war Italy in 1946. As well as commenting on the political situation, the diaries include gossip, humour and even a meeting with Princess Elizabeth.

Sir Arthur Harris (1892–1984) remains one of the most controversial figures of the Second World War. As Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command from 1942 to 1945 he made a significant contribution to the Allies’ ultimate success, but his reputation has been tarnished by the fierce controversy over the ‘area bombing’ of German cities. Henry Probert’s critical but sympathetic biography is the first to give a properly balanced account of a remarkably able and dedicated man.