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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.

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.

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.

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.

Facing defeat in 1945, Hitler ordered the destruction of official military documents. Admiral Dönitz defied the order, believing that the German navy had fought an honourable war and had nothing to hide. The result was the survival of these first-hand accounts, written without hindsight, of Hitler's meetings with his naval commanders-in-chief, Raeder and Dönitz, and other high-ranking officers. This edition contains the original Anthony Martienssen translation made for the British Admiralty and first published in 1947.