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Partly thanks to their potentially bomb-resistant solidity, The Ritz, the Savoy, Claridges and the Dorchester became central to the cultural and political life of the country during the Second World War. This colourful history explores a remarkable period when cabinet ministers, military officials, exiled foreign dignitaries, journalists, spies, artists and chancers all used the hotels as meeting places, makeshift offices, temporary embassies and social centres.

For carrying out an audacious ambush to free her husband and other prisoners from a Gestapo van in 1943, Lucie Aubrac (1912–2007) is still hailed as a heroine of the French Resistance. This first full English-language biography tells her compelling story but also analyses the Aubracs' defence of inconsistencies in her account, which were exposed when the former head of the Gestapo claimed that the couple had become informers and betrayed their comrades.

By the summer of 1940 nearly a million and a half British men had joined the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), a response to the very real threat of invasion by a rapidly advancing German Army. This book explores the LDV’s transformation from an enthusiastic yet ill- equipped organisation into the capable Home Guard, which, as the threat of invasion receded, nevertheless became key to the UK’s local defence strategy, as well as a means of combating the purported Fifth Column.

This illustrated account of Monte Cassino – a ‘four-month-long bloodbath... in one of the worst battlefields in history’ – includes expert analysis of the four stages of the battle and first-hand accounts by some of the combatants.

From plain infantryman on the Eastern Front, to highly decorated war hero, to Soviet prisoner: Williamson traces the military career of Hans Sturm and the moral values he upheld despite the Nazi regime.

A soldier in the Germany infantry, Friedrich Reiner Niemann (1922–1945) served on the Eastern Front from 1941 until his disappearance during the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive. He wrote over 100 letters home; translated and introduced here by Denis Havel.

Long before the USA entered the Second World War, William Ash (1918–2014) had left Texas, joined up in Britain and was flying Spitfires with 411 squadron. In 1942 he was shot down over France, captured and incarcerated in Stalag III; he spent the rest of the war trying to escape from various Nazi PoW camps, including Oflag XXIB in Poland. In this book, Bishop explores the PoW experience while telling the exciting and inspirational story of Ash’s determined efforts to break free.

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.

After Himmler’s suicide in 1945, his letters were believed lost. Then, in 2014, they were discovered in Tel Aviv and authenticated by historians. Edited by his great niece, they present a chilling glimpse into the mind of a mass murderer. Alongside banal family details and fanatical devotion to the Nazi cause, they reveal him to have been much closer to Hitler than previously thought, and remove any doubt that he was the architect of the Final Solution.

TRIPLEX was the code name for one of the most sensitive intelligence sources of the Second World War: material extracted illicitly from the diplomatic bags of neutral countries in London. The MI5 officer who oversaw the operation was Anthony Blunt – and the rest is history. Drawing on newly released Soviet intelligence documents, this book reveals for the first time the full extent of the damage done by the Cambridge Five to British intelligence, and its impact on the Cold War.

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'.

Long before the USA entered the Second World War, William Ash (1918–2014) had left Texas, joined up in Britain and was flying Spitfires with 411 squadron. In 1942 he was shot down over France, captured and incarcerated in Stalag III; he spent the rest of the war trying to escape from various Nazi PoW camps, including Oflag XXIB in Poland. In this book, Bishop explores the PoW experience while telling the exciting and inspirational story of Ash’s determined efforts to break free.

Craig Nelson gives a vivid account of the Japanese surprise attack on the American naval and air forces on 7 December 1941, describing the situation in Japan and the US prior to the attack, the immediate result, and its later, unforeseen consequences.

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.

Drawing on the ‘massive and labyrinthine’ archives of the Army Chaplaincy in the Second World War and the recollections and reflections of hundreds of army, navy and marine veterans, Snape’s study shows how, despite constitutional constraints, pre-war ‘religious depression’, and the pitfalls of war itself, religion played a crucial role in helping more than 16 million American service men and women through the ordeal of war in Europe and the Pacific.

In this epic narrative – a former Mail on Sunday Book of the Year – the American popular historian Lynne Olson focuses on the relationships between Britain and the governments from occupied Europe that found refuge in London during the Second World War. She explores their valuable contributions to the Allied war effort, as well as Britain’s staunch resistance to Hitler, and the exploits of the fighters across Europe who were inspired by the British ‘beacon of hope’.

During Hitler’s time in power, countless German conspirators planned coups, assassination attempts and catastrophic action against the Führer. This book chronicles the motives, politics, resources and networks of military resistance operations, including Himmler’s 1939 bomb plot and the 20 July plot or ‘Valkyrie’ in 1944, highlighting the critical roles of General Ludwig Beck and Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster in their attempts to end the war.

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.

Based on documents from published archives and historical reconstructions, this volume comprises memoranda of Hitler’s meetings with foreign rulers and ministers, among them Mussolini, Pétain, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Molotov, and transcripts of conferences with his own military staff at crucial junctures such as the Italian crisis and the final days in Berlin. Hitler’s recorded statements and orders offer insights into his thinking, plans and reactions to events as the war progressed.