This appraisal of Operation Market Garden focuses on the involvement of the 4th Parachute Brigade, which was decimated in the first day of its engagement on 19 September 1944. Describing the daily progress of the airborne assaults on Dutch bridges and the Battle of Arnhem, the author apportions blame for the disaster to errors by senior commanders, including Field Marshal Montgomery, and the sending of insufficiently trained men into battle.

A military expert surveys South Africa's long border war (1966–90), with extensive contributions from other specialists. Focusing on hardware and strategy, the book explores Pretoria’s atomic programme, the covert communications behind the conflict, the highly trained SWAPO guerrillas, and the unequal battles against Soviet-supplied tanks.

Valeriy Zamulin has written extensively on the Battle of Kursk. Here he takes a closer look at aspects of it that have been subject to debate, including examples of friendly fire censored from Soviet history, German preparations for the counterattack, and myths about battlefield tactics.

At the outbreak of war with France in 1793, the British Army was significantly understrength and its soldiers lacked expertise in advanced manoeuvres. Britain therefore had to rely on auxiliaries from various German states to pursue Allied campaigns in the Low Countries. This account of their role provides previously unpublished information on the negotiation of treaties with German princes and the organization and experiences of the contingents.

Scots working in London when the First World War began were quick to join the London Scottish Regiment; many never returned. Drawing on unpublished records, these essays record the involvement of figures such as Douglas Haig and John Buchan, and practical and discuss the moral support offered by churches, charities, clubs and associations to these men and their families during and after the conflict.

The oldest military regiment in Wales, the Royal Welch Fusiliers was much reduced after the First World War. This volume of its history begins with its reorganization before describing in detail their deployments in Ireland, India, the North-West Frontier, Cyprus, Sudan, Shanghai, Gibraltar and Hong Kong between the wars, before returning to France in 1939. The descriptions are accompanied by maps and contemporary photographs and include staff lists of officers and NCOs.

From Copenhagen, grandson of Eclipse, the great British Thoroughbred race horse, and the Duke of Wellington’s mount at the Battle of Waterloo, to a Mongolian mare, Sergeant Reckless carrying ammunition to US Marines under fire during the Korean War, this military history recounts the exploits of celebrated war horses, reflecting on the characteristics of different breeds as well as the qualities of the individual mounts.

This overview of the Red Army’s air forces in the opening days of the German invasion of 1941 presents a survey of the technical specifications, personnel, key locations and strategic plans of the commanders. A detailed introduction also describes the preparations and the territorial infringements that preceded Operation Barbarossa. Drawing on German and Soviet archives, the book includes maps and over 300 photographs, many of them previously unseen.

The doomed Gallipoli campaign – the Allied military effort to force a passage through the Dardanelles Straits and knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war – has been controversial since the final evacuation of troops from the Peninsula in January 1916. Focusing on the MEF, this volume presents original research by more than 20 historians: Part I covers the structure of the battle; Part II discusses command and control; Part III deals with support and enablers, including British air power, nurses, chaplains and mining.

A leading military historian, who specializes in the Second World War’s Eastern Front, analyses one of the most intriguing periods of the Battles for Kharkov, when German forces retook the city. The conquest seemed decisive, but the complex daily troop manoeuvres and tactical switches that were involved laid the groundwork for the Soviets to reframe their strategy for a final victory later in the year.

In 1794 during the war against Revolutionary France, the first Earl Grey led a Caribbean campaign to capture Martinique and Guadalope. Supported by maps and illustrations, this book demonstrates that although the campaign ultimately failed, the unorthodox tactics that were deployed showed a flexibility that would influence several notable subalterns who went on to success in Wellington's Peninsular army and Royal Artillery and, in the case of Richard Fletcher, the Royal Engineers.

Credit for creating the British army often goes to Charles II or William III, with James II’s role in the organization of a viable, expanded institution overlooked. Ede-Borrett addresses this with a thorough, illustrated account of its development, drawing on royal archives and contemporary documents to detail its regiments, troops, uniforms, equipment, flags and other paraphernalia.

Modelling English, Scottish and Welsh soldiers of the 14th century, the templates in this book also include a castle, siege engines, camp tents and instructions for wargaming medieval battles. Slightly off-mint.

Infantry and cavalry troops of the early 18th-century British, French, Dutch, Prussian and Bavarian armies feature in this volume, as well as regimental flags, artillery and officer figures.

In 2018 Latvia’s politicians released KGB files seized when the Soviet Union collapsed almost three decades earlier. Alongside eyewitness interviews, they form the basis of this disturbing account of 50 years of tyranny that saw dissidents tortured and killed and 45,000 exiled to the gulags.

In the years after the First World War, Britain’s public schools, in common with thousands of communities across the country, erected memorials honouring their war dead. Ranging from wooden crosses returned from makeshift graves near the battlefields to new buildings, and including panels listing the dead, stained glass windows, statues and books of remembrance, the memorials in 49 schools are surveyed in this handsome, illustrated volume, with details of each school’s way of remembering its fallen old boys and masters.

Beginning with discussions of the British Army’s attitude toward sex, the soldier’s moral code, and army morale, this study looks in depth at the sexual lives of troops on the Western Front. Beyond the usual topics of venereal disease and sexual violence, Cherry explores organized prostitution, the Army’s ‘red lamp’ official brothels and fraternization with local women, always mindful that ‘the story of the soldier’s sexual life is arguably also the story of a woman’s survival strategy’.

In 1799 an uneasy Anglo-Russian alliance, formed as part of the Second Coalition against France, landed troops in Holland to overthrow the Batavian Republic, a French satellite, and reinstate Willem V of Orange. Van Uythoven gives a comprehensive account of this ‘Secret Expedition’ and its background, from the creation of the Batavian Republic, through the invasion and the battles of Zijpe, Bergen, Alkmaar and Castricum, to the Armistice and the state of the armies at the end of the campaign.

Fresh from victory over Sweden, Peter the Great took on the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, only to be defeated. This book examines the causes of the conflict, and the size, composition and tactics of the armies. Their uniforms are illustrated in specially commissioned artwork.

This analysis of the crucial 1914 encounters on the Western Front, collectively known as the Battle of Ardennes, encompasses both German and French viewpoints on moments of success and failure, and explores the underlying political, bureaucratic and military issues in the years before the war.

When Britain found itself at war with revolutionary France in 1793, its army was chronically underfunded, undermanned and poorly disciplined. This study analyses the recruitment, training and organization instituted by Sir Ralph Abercromby, which turned it into an effective fighting force, and offers a detailed account of its victorious campaign against the French Army of the Orient in Egypt in 1801.

Charles Barrington pays tribute to his much-loved grandfather in this celebratory biography of army officer Guy Meade. Meade was commissioned into the Royal Horse Artillery in 1902 and served in J Battery in the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War, seeing action at Mons, Ypres and Fromelles. After the war, tours to Egypt and India preceded a return to Aldershot in 1934 and promotion to Commander Royal Artillery, his most senior rank.

To defend itself from Royalist armies, London was extensively militarized during the 1640s, its greatest achievement being an 18km circuit of earthwork fortifications called the ‘Lines of Communication’. Flintham’s survey examines the military features of Civil War London, including its armies and arsenal, and contains an extensive gazetteer of nearly 200 Civil War military sites in the city.

The second volume of Ken Wharton’s history offers a month-by-month account of events in the troubled province from January 1988 to December 1990, a period of unremitting bombings, shootings, ambushes and kidnappings. The timeline is interspersed with frank interviews with both Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries, members of the security forces and victims’ relatives. Unapologetically raw and emotional, the book is explicit in its portrayal of the human cost of terrorism, and its condemnation of both sides in the conflict.

As part of the marriage contract between Charles II and the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, Charles agreed to send three regiments, under the command of General Hermann von Schomberg, to support Portugal’s struggle for independence from Spain. Many of the troops were from Cromwell’s disbanded New Model Army. This history of the brigade and its expedition explores the politics surrounding the Portuguese Restoration War and recounts many of its battles, including Montes Claros.

This book reproduces hand-coloured illustrations of Spanish military uniforms taken from a rare version (c. 1800) of the Spanish Army’s ‘order of battle’ or estados militares. Each drawing is captioned with full descriptions of regiments and uniform style.

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.

In the Case Blue operation, the German Army turned its attention on the Eastern Front from Moscow to southern Russia, quickly advancing to within striking distance of Stalingrad. This study, compiled using previously classified Soviet and German documents and translated from the original Russian, analyses the Russian response to the offensive, focusing on the role of Soviet General Liziukov, who led effective counter attacks with the 2nd Tank Corps but then mysteriously went missing.