5ive Guys FC

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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

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Robert Harris

'Impossible to stop reading' OBSERVER 
'Thrilling, intricate and hilarious' DAILY MAIL 
 
APRIL 1945: From the ruins of Berlin, a Luftwaffe transport plane takes off carrying secret papers belonging to Adolf Hitler. Half an hour later, it crashes in flames. 
 
APRIL 1983: In a bank vault in Switzerland, a German magazine offers to sell more than 50 volumes of Hitler's secret diaries. The asking price is $4 million. 
 
40 years from the alleged discovery, Robert Harris chronicles the gripping tale of one of the biggest frauds in history. 
 
'Brilliantly chronicled' NEW STATESMAN 
'A masterly account' LITERARY REVIEW

Selling Hitler

40th Anniversary Special Edition

The Story of the Hitler Diaries

James Patterson

These are the brutally honest stories usually only shared amongst comrades in arms; stories of life-and-death decisions, and learning how to live with the effects of horrific injuries, both physical and mental. In the voices of the men and women who've fought overseas, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a rare eye-opening look into what it's really like to wear the uniform, fight in combat, lose friends and come home.

Walk in My Combat Boots

True Stories from the Battlefront

Damien Lewis

"A must read for all Damien Lewis fans" Compass 
 
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The most explosive true war story of the 21st Century 
 
 It is the winter of 2001. A terror ship is bound for Britain carrying a horrifying weapon. The British military sends a crack unit of SAS and SBS to assault the vessel before she reaches London. 
 
So begins a true story of explosive action as this band of elite warriors pursues the merchants of death from the high seas to the harsh wildlands of Afghanistan. The hunt culminates in the single greatest battle of the Afghan war, the brutal and bloody siege of an ancient mud-walled fortress crammed full of hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban. 
 
Fighting against impossible odds and bitter betrayal, our handful of crack fighters battle to rescue their fellow soldiers trapped by a murderous, fanatical enemy. 
 
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"The most dramatic story of a secret wartime mission you will ever read" News of the World 
 
 "The author has been given unprecedented access" Zoo 
 
 "Gripping" Eye Spy

Bloody Heroes

Peter Caddick-Adams

The most comprehensive and authoritative history of D-Day ever published 
 
‘Extraordinary’ Andrew Roberts 
‘Fascinating’ Daily Mail 
‘Magisterial’ James Holland 
________________ 
 
6 June 1944, 4 a.m. Hundreds of boats assemble off the coast of France. By nightfall, thousands of the men they carry will be dead. 
 
This was D-Day, the most important day of the twentieth century. 
 
In Sand and Steel, one of Britain’s leading military historians offers a panoramic new account of the Allied invasion of France. Drawing on a decade of new research, Peter Caddick-Adams masterfully recreates what it was like to wade out onto the carnage of Omaha Beach, or parachute behind enemy lines in Normandy. He explores the year-long preparations that went into the invasion, overturning decades-old assumptions about Allied strategy. And he pays tribute to the remarkable individuals who made D-Day possible – not just soldiers on the beaches, but also paratroopers, sailors, aircrews, and women on the Home Front. 
 
The result is a compulsively readable account of the greatest battle of the Second World War. It will be the definitive work on D-Day for years to come. 
________________ 
 
‘A hugely impressive book which makes full use of a lifetime of learning and experience.’ Herald 
 
‘Peter Caddick-Adams’ D-Day must surely go down as the definitive narrative of that pivotal moment in the history of the war.’ James Holland 
 
‘This is a warts-and-all forensic examination of the Allied invasion, offering stacks of insight based on a decade of research.’ Soldier

Sand and Steel

A New History of D-Day

Barbie Probert-Wright

Two sisters. 
One extraordinary true story. 
 
Germany, 1945. Trapped between advancing armies, stranded hundreds of miles from their mother, and with their father missing in action, sisters Barbie and Eva were confronted with an impossible choice. 
 
Should they stay and face invasion or risk their lives to find their mother? 
 
Together, they set out on a perilous three-hundred mile journey on foot across a country ravaged by war. Fuelled by courage and love, Eva and seven-year-old Barbie encounter incredible hardship, extraordinary bravery, and overwhelming generosity. 
 
Against all odds, they both survived. 
But neither sister came out of the journey unscathed . . . 
 
This is the powerful true story of their escape.

Escape

Our journey home through war-torn Germany

Chris Ryan

Eight members of the SAS set off on the mission. Only one evaded capture. 
This is his true story. 
 
The SAS mission conducted behind Iraqi lines is one of the most famous true stories of courage and survival in modern warfare. Late on the evening of 24 January 1991, the patrol was compromised deep behind enemy lines in Iraq. A fierce firefight left the eight men miraculously unscathed, but they were forced to run for their lives. 
 
Their aim was to reach the Syrian border, 120 kilometres to the north-west, but during the first night the patrol accidentally broke into two groups of five and three. Chris Ryan found himself left with two companions. Nothing had prepared them for the vicious cold of the desert winter, and after a blizzard and a desperate search for food, Chris Ryan found himself the last man standing. 
 
Left on his own, Ryan narrowly escaped an Iraqi attack and set out alone, trying to reach the border through some of the most lethal country in the world. This is the story of courage under fire, of skin-of-the-teeth escapes, of the best trained soldiers in the world fighting against adverse conditions, and of one man's courageous refusal to lie down and die.

The One That Got Away

The legendary true story of an SAS man alone behind enemy lines

This book chronicles the story of the single most daring Special Forces operation since World War Two - Operation Barras; the attempted rescue by the SAS of the British Forces who were being held captive by guerrilla gang the West Side Boys in the Sierra Leone jungle. The West Side Boys were a strange-looking bunch, wearing pink shades, shower caps, fluorescent wigs and voodoo charms they believed made them invulnerable to bullets - an impression re-enforced by ganja, heroine, crack cocaine and gallons of sweet palm wine. In 1999 a twelve man patrol of Royal Irish Rangers, who were training government troops in Sierra Leone, were captured and held hostage by the West Side Boys. They were held prisoner in a fortified jungle hideaway, with severed heads decorating the palisades, defended by some 400 heavily armed soldiers. Operation Barras, the rescue mission, was a combined force of 100 Paras, twelve members of the Special Boat Squadron, helicopters from the Navy and RAF and, spearheading the operation, 40-strong D squadron of the SAS. Against amazing odds the hostages were rescued - over 150 of the enemy were killed. Operation Certain Death is a thrilling true story of all out war. No hostages taken. Blood-letting on a vast scale inflicted on a very blood-thirsty enemy. A gripping piece of true military history, perfect for fans of action adventure stories and anyone interested in the top secret division of the British Army.

Operation Certain Death

Henry Hemming

*** The Sunday Times bestseller *** 
 
'Vividly imagined and prodigiously researched' Helen Davies, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 
 
 'Such a rewarding read' John Preston, Daily Mail, Books of the Year 
 
'This odd, secretive man is brought to life', Robbie Millen, The Times, Books of the Year 
 
Maxwell Knight was a paradox. A jazz obsessive and nature enthusiast (he is the author of the definitive work on how to look after a gorilla), he is seen today as one of MI5's greatest spymasters, a man who did more than any other to break up British fascism during the Second World War – in spite of having once belonged to the British Fascisti himself. He was known to his agents and colleagues simply as M, and was rumoured to be part of the inspiration for the character M in the James Bond series. 
 
Knight became a legendary spymaster despite an almost total lack of qualifications. What set him apart from his peers was a mercurial ability to transform almost anyone into a fearless secret agent. He was the first in MI5 to grasp the potential of training female agents. 
 
M is about more than just one man however. In its pages, Hemming reveals for the first time in print the names and stories of seven men and women recruited by Knight, on behalf of MI5, and then asked to infiltrate the most dangerous political organizations in Britain at that time. Until now, their identities have been kept secret outside MI5. Drawn from every walk of life, they led double lives—often at great personal cost—in order to protect the country they loved. With the publication of this book, it will be possible at last to celebrate the lives of these courageous, selfless individuals. 
 
Drawing on declassified documents, private family archives and interviews with retired MI5 officers as well as the families of MI5 agents, M reveals not just the shadowy world of espionage but a brilliant, enigmatic man at its centre.

Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster

Jeremy Greenstock

Tony Blair's decision to back George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq will go down as a defining moment for Britain. First as Ambassador to the UN, and then as Special Envoy for Iraq, the UK’s highest authority on the ground, Sir Jeremy Greenstock was centre stage in the tumultuous days leading up to the Iraq war and witnessed first-hand its tremendous impact. This extraordinary book is a record of what he saw. 
 
Greenstock writes openly about US—UK relations, taking his readers behind closed doors and revealing the actions of key players in New York, Washington, London, Paris and the Middle East. To what extent was the Bush administration determined to attack Iraq come what may? What promise did Blair extract in exchange for backing Bush? Was the war legal? What effect is it continuing to have on Britain’s long-term relations with America and Europe? 
 
Held back from publication when originally written in 2005, and now revised with a new foreword and epilogue following the publication of the Chilcot Report, Iraq: The Cost of War is a groundbreaking blow-by-blow account of one of the most pivotal and controversial conflicts in recent world history.

Iraq

The Cost of War

The mysterious world of elite combat units blown wide open... 
 
Find out how elite teams prepare for Close Quarter Battle. 
 
Discover how they launch assaults against pirate boats. 
 
Learn the secrets to directing air attack against a key intelligence target. 
 
Read how units manage to enter hostile territory undetected, and carry out long-ranges reconnaissance mission deep behind enemy lines. 
 
In his new book, former SAS hero Chris Ryan delves into the secretive world of elite warfare, revealing the nuts and bolts of some of the toughest, sharpest and most legendary fighting units in existence around the world today. 
 
Drawing on his experience as a soldier in the Regiment for a decade, as well as his recent unique access to some of the world's hardest and most sophisticated special police units for his TV show Elite World Cops, Chris Ryan explores the secrets of the trade. From the HALO insertion technique to mounting ambushes and escape-and-evasion tips, Chris Ryan's Fight to Win is the ultimate guide to elite forces training and operations.

Fight to Win

Deadly Skills of the Elite Forces

Laddie Lucas

A unique and enthralling anthology compiled by WWII flying ace, Laddie Lucas, Voices in the Air tells the story of the air battles of the Second World War in the voices of those who took part. Drawn largely on the writings of the combatants themselves from all sides of the conflict, this book offers a vivid and highly individual account of the great aerial campaigns of WWII. From a thrilling account of the first sustained dogfight between Spitfire and Messerschmitt in 1940, to an eighteen-year-old Japanese suicide pilot's last letter home and the Luftwaffe leaders' analysis of 'what went wrong' after the Battle of Britain, the book dramatically deals with every aspect of the war. Full of stories of astonishing escapades, incredible bravery, dogged persistence and moving feats of arms, Voices in the Air honours both the sung and the unsung heroes of the war.

Voices In The Air 1939-1945

Stephen Clarke

Published in the 200th Anniversary year of the Battle of Waterloo a witty look at how the French still think they won, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde. 
 
Two centuries after the Battle of Waterloo, the French are still in denial. 
 
If Napoleon lost on 18 June 1815 (and that's a big 'if'), then whoever rules the universe got it wrong. As soon as the cannons stopped firing, French historians began re-writing history. The Duke of Wellington was beaten, they say, and then the Prussians jumped into the boxing ring, breaking all the rules of battle. In essence, the French cannot bear the idea that Napoleon, their greatest-ever national hero, was in any way a loser. Especially not against the traditional enemy – les Anglais. 
 
Stephen Clarke has studied the French version of Waterloo, as told by battle veterans, novelists, historians – right up to today's politicians, and he has uncovered a story of pain, patriotism and sheer perversion ...

How the French Won Waterloo - or Think They Did

Gordon G. Chang

Nuclear Showdown published by Asia expert, Gordon Chang, was of the first books to exploire the full extent of the North Korean nuclear threat, its origins, international implications, and solutions. 
 
The United States is the mightiest nation in history, yet for six decades one of the world's weakest states has challenged the superpower and kept it at bay. Today, that country also threatens to change the course of human events with an act of unimaginable devastation. Nuclear Showdown analyses the failed society that has become the gravest threat to America and international order: North Korea. Chang's insightful book reveals the full horror of the crisis threatening to turn Asia into the world's next battleground. 
 
How can North Korea be stopped? No one seems to have an answer. For more than half a century, policymakers have failed when it comes to subjugating Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il. Nuclear Showdown proposes a solution that can defuse the standoff once and for all.

Nuclear Showdown

North Korea Takes On the World

Peter Caddick-Adams - one of the leading military historians of his generation - reviews one of the great final engagements of WW2: The Battle of the Bulge. Including specially commissioned maps, black and white photography, archive material and personal interviews, this is a riveting landmark study of a pivotal historical moment and perfect for readers of James Holland, John Keegan, Anthony Beevor and Max Hastings. 
 
'A thought-provoking and compelling account of one of the most iconic battles of the Second World War. Brilliant' -- James Holland 
'Caddick-Adams knows more about the Bulge than any other historian I have read...I admire his originality...Snow and Steel offers an authoritative narrative of the drama...' -- Max Hasting, The Sunday Times 
'An encyclopaedic and eminently readable book' -- Times Literary Supplement 
'A compelling read' -- ***** Reader review 
'The definitive Bulge history' -- ***** Reader review 
'Absolutely brilliant book' -- ***** Reader review 
'Brilliant read. Captivating and informative' -- ***** Reader review 
'Excellent, authoritative and very well written' -- ***** Reader review 
******************************************************************************************** 
Snow and Steel is a huge reassessment of Hitler's last great throw of the dice: 'The Battle of the Bulge', the battle for the Ardennes from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. 
 
This is an utterly fascinating five weeks when for a time it looked like Hitler had outflanked the allied armies pushing toward the Rhine and might just throw them back to the Normandy beaches. It is also the context for the catastrophic events at Bastogne depicted so graphically in Band of Brothers. 
 
 For military history fans this is one of those touchstone battles of World War Two, written by an author with a world-wide reputation. 
 
With specially commissioned maps, photographs, primary archival material and personal interviews, this is a truly controversial, commercial and landmark book.

Snow and Steel

Battle of the Bulge 1944-45

Isobel Charman

During the First World War three quarters of a million British people died – a figure so huge that it feels impossible to give it a human context. Consequently we struggle to truly grasp the impact this devastating conflict must have had on people's day-to-day lives. We resort to looking at the war from a distance, viewing its events in terms of their political or military significance. 
 
The Great War: The People's Story is different. Like the all-star ITV series it accompanies, it immerses the reader in the everyday experiences of real people who lived through the war. Using letters, diaries, and memoirs – many of which have never previously been published – Isobel Charman has painstakingly reconstructed the lives of people such as separated newly-weds Alan and Dorothy Lloyd, plucky enlisted factory-worker Reg Evans and proudly independent suffragist Kate Parry Frye. A century on, they here tell their stories in their own words, offering a uniquely personal account of the conflict. 
 
The Great War: The People's Story is both a meticulously researched piece of narrative history and a deeply moving remembrance of the extraordinary acts of extremely ordinary people.

The Great War

A Nation's Story

The People's Story (Official TV Tie-In)

From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller, M: Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster 
 
In the World War II era, Geoffrey Pyke was described as one of the world's great minds. An inventor, adventurer and polymath, he was an unlikely hero of both world wars. He earned a fortune on the stock market, founded an influential pre-school, and is seen as the father of the U.S. Special Forces. 
 
In 1942, he convinced Winston Churchill to build an aircraft carrier out of reinforced ice. He escaped from a German WWI prison camp, wrote a bestseller, and aided Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He even launched a private attempt to avert the outbreak of the Second World War by sending into Nazi Germany a group of pollsters disguised as golfers. 
 
And he may have been a Russian spy. 
 
70 years after his death, Henry Hemming reveals Pyke's astonishing story in full: his brilliance, his flaws, and his life of adventures, ideas, and secrets.

Churchill's Iceman

The True Story of Geoffrey Pyke: Genius, Fugitive, Spy

Allan Williams

The story of the photographic intelligence work undertaken from a country house at Medmenham, Buckinghamshire, is one of the great lost stories of the Second World War . 
 
At its peak in 1944, almost 2,000 British and American men and women worked at the top-secret Danesfield House, interpreting photographs - the majority stereoscopic so they could be viewed in 3D - to unlock secrets of German military activity and weapons development. Millions of aerial photographs were taken by Allied pilots, flying unarmed modified Spitfires and Mosquitos on missions over Nazi Europe. it was said that an aircraft could land, the photographs be developed and initial interpretation completed within two hours - marking the culmination of years of experiments in aerial intelligence techniques. 
 
Their finest hour began in 1943, during the planning stages of the Allied invasion of Europe, when Douglas Kendall, who masterminded the interpretation work at Medmenham, led the hunt for Hitler's secret weapons. Operation Crossbow would grow from a handful of photographic interpreters to the creation of a hand-picked team, and came to involve interpreters from across the Medmenham spectrum, including the team of aircraft specialists led by the redoubtable Constance Babington Smith. In November that year, whilst analysing photographs of Peenemunde in northern Germany, they spotted a small stunted aircraft on a ramp. This intelligence breakthrough linked the Nazi research station with a growing network of sites in northern France, where ramps were being constructed aligned not only with London, but targets throughout southern Britain. 
 
Through the combined skill and dedication of the Crossbow team and the heroism of the Allied pilots, throughout late 1943 and 1944 V-weapon launch sites were located and through countermeasures destroyed, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, and changing the course of the war. 
 
Operation Crossbow is a wonderful story of human endeavour and derring-do, told for the first time.

Operation Crossbow

The Untold Story of the Search for Hitler’s Secret Weapons

Alex Kershaw

_______________________ 
The true story behind the hit NETFLIX drama 
 
From the invasion of Italy to the gates of Dachau, no World War II infantry unit in Europe saw more action or endured worse than the one commanded by Felix Sparks. 
 
The US Army 157th regiment, known as the Thunderbirds, drew many of its men from more than fifty different Native American tribes, mixed in with Mexican-Americans and men more used to herding cattle in the American southwest. Felix Sparks, tasked with leading the diverse regiment regarded by generals as one of the US's finest fighting forces, was a maverick officer, and the only man to survive his company's wartime odyssey from bitter beginning to victorious end. 
 
Here, his remarkable true story is told for the first time, along with those of the men who bravely fought alongside him. 
_______________________ 
'Exceptional....The Liberator balances evocative prose with attention to detail and is a worthy addition to vibrant classics of small-unit history like Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers' Wall Street Journal 
 
'A revealing portrait of a man who led by example and suffered a deep emotional wound with the loss of each soldier under his command ... The Liberator is a worthwhile and fast-paced examination of a dedicated officer navigating - and somehow surviving - World War II.' Washington Post 
 
'A history of the American war experience in miniature, from the hard-charging enthusiasm of the initial landings to the clear-eyed horror of the liberation of the concentration camps.' The Daily Beast 
 
'Kershaw has ensured that individuals and entire battles that might have been lost to history, or overshadowed by more 'important' people and events, have their own place in the vast, protean tale of World War II ... Where Kershaw succeeds, and where The Liberator is at its most riveting and satisfying, is in its delineation of Felix Sparks as a good man that other men would follow into Hell - and in its unblinking, matter-of-fact description, in battle after battle, of just how gruesome, terrifying and dehumanizing that Hell could be.' Time

The Liberator

One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey From the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau

Michael Dobbs

From the bestselling author of One Minute to Midnight, this is the riveting story of the last six months of World War II, when the hopeful Allied situation inspired by the Yalta Conference descended into the open conflict that would lead to the Cold War. 
 
When FDR, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin gathered outside the Crimean city of Yalta in February 1945, they had Hitler's armies on the run, and victory was just a matter of time. Their mission was to forge the decisions that would shape the postwar world, and above all to divide up Europe between Soviet and Western influence. These men had been fighting side by side for nearly four years but the cracks in their alliance were emerging; even before the Second World War ended, another conflict was beginning. 
 
Six Months captures this turning point of the twentieth century, re-creating the steady breakdown in relations between powers. While the Berlin airlift and the Iron Curtain would not arrive for three years, by August 1945 the West and the Soviet Union were firmly on the path to a Cold War. Michael Dobbs brilliantly renders the personalities and geopolitics that drove this descent, illuminating the aims and frustrations of the key leaders. This is a vivid story of power, personalities, and national interests competing at a crucial moment in history.

Six Months in 1945

FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman – from World War to Cold War

The five-month Monte Cassino campaign in central Italy is one of the best-known European land battles of World War Two, alongside D-Day and Stalingrad. It has a particular resonance now, because Cassino, with its multitude of participating armies - most notably the American 5th Army under the controversial General Mark Clark - was perhaps the campaign of the Second World War that most closely anticipates the coalition operations of today, with its ever-shifting cast of players stuck in inhospitable, mountainous terrain, pursuing an objective set by unknowing politicians in distant capitals, where victory is difficult to define. 
 
Monte Cassino was characterised by the destruction of its world famous Abbey: in retrospect, considered an unjustifiable act of cultural vandalism by the allies.The audit trail of decision-making to destroy an icon as well known then as the Eiffel Tower or Lincoln Memorial, is a chilling reminder that similar decisions are still being made in Iraq and Afghanistan and indeed Libya. To this day, reversing normal prejudice, German troops are welcome in the abbey, having rescued its treasures from allied destruction in February 1944. 
 
Cassino was an unusual campaign for World War II in that its outcome was not reliant on sweeping movements or the use of tanks or aircraft - but by old-fashioned boots in the mud, whether capturing the town of Cassino after months of grinding urban warfare (a Stalingrad in miniature) or scrambling up the steep mountain to seize the heights and the religious complex on top of Monte Cassino. 
 
Monte Cassino Abbey was painstakingly rebuilt after the war (its baroque chapel remains incomplete) and is now a World Heritage site. An hour south of Rome, it is visited each year by up to one million tourists and pilgrims from around the world.

Monte Cassino

Ten Armies in Hell

Ross Kemp

To the people of Great Britain 
 
World War II was the deadliest and bloodiest war in history. Never before or since have so many people made such a personal sacrifice in the line of duty. 
 
Raiders tells the extraordinary true stories of six of the most daring special operations ever undertaken in warfare and the heroism of the people behind them. 
 
Operation Chariot was the most ambitious amphibious raid ever mounted by the British Forces. Attacking the heavily fortified dry dock at St Nazaire in German occupied France, an elite group of commandos battered their way through a maelstrom of bullets and incendiaries. Their boat is punctured by over a hundred shell holes, the dead and wounded lie all around them on the decks, but still their guns are blazing and still they press on... 
 
'Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others' 
Winston Churchill

Raiders

World War Two True Stories

Barbara Mortimer

On 3 September 1939, the Prime Minister declared that Britain was at war with Nazi Germany. 
 
Thousands of young women, many of them barely out of school, were sent headlong into gruelling training regimes that would see them become wartime nurses. 
 
Sisters features over 150 previously unpublished stories from the archives of the Royal College of Nursing. The vivid, poignant and riveting stories capture these nurses' incredible bravery and touching friendships.

Sisters

Heroic true-life stories from the nurses of World War Two

Alastair Campbell

The Burden of Power is the fourth volume of Alastair Campbell's diaries, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited given the ground it covers. 
 
It begins on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, and it ends on the day Campbell leaves Downing Street. In between there are two wars: first Afghanistan, and then, even more controversially, Iraq. It was the most difficult decision of Tony Blair's premiership, and almost certainly the most unpopular. Campbell describes in detail the discussions with President Bush and other world leaders as the steps to war are taken, and delivers a unique account of Blair as war leader. He records the enormous political difficulties at home, and the sense of crisis that engulfed the government after the suicide of weapons inspector David Kelly. 
 
And all the while, Blair continues to struggle with two issues that ran throughout his time in government - fighting for peace in Northern Ireland, and trying to make peace with Gordon Brown. And Campbell continues to struggle balancing the needs of his family with one of the most pressurised roles in politics. 
 
Riveting and revelatory, The Burden of Power is as raw and intimate a portrayal of political life as you are ever likely to read.

The Burden of Power

Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries

Harry Benson

In April 1982 Harry Benson was a 21-year-old Royal Navy commando helicopter pilot, fresh out of training and one of the youngest helicopter pilots to serve in the Falklands War. These pilots, nicknamed 'junglies', flew most of the land-based missions in the Falklands in their Sea King and Wessex helicopters. Much of what happened in the war - the politics, task force ships, Sea Harriers, landings, Paras and Marines - is well-known and documented. But almost nothing is known of the young commando helicopter pilots and aircrewmen who made it all happen on land and sea. This is their 'Boys Own' story, told for the very first time. 
 
Harry Benson has interviewed forty of his former colleagues for the book creating a tale of skill, initiative, resourcefulness, humour, luck, and adventure. This is a fast-paced, meticulously researched and compelling account written by someone who was there, in the cockpit of a Wessex helicopter. 
 
If you liked Apache, Vulcan 607 and Chickenhawk, you'll love Scram! 
 
The word "Scram" was used to warn other junglies to go to ground or risk being shot down by their own side as Argentinean jets blasted through 'bomb alley'.

Scram!

The Gripping First-hand Account of the Helicopter War in the Falklands

Christina Schmid

A LOVE LOST. 
A LIFE CUT SHORT. 
 
'From the moment I set eyes on him I adored him. The connection between us was so strong it went beyond everything else. His job, my job, his lifestyle, my lifestyle. All that fell away.' 
 
And then one earth-shattering day Christina's worst nightmare came true when Oz was killed on his final day of duty before flying home to his family. 
 
This is Christina and Oz's story: a story about love and loss, hope and despair and of living in constant fear. Christina's extraordinary bravery and composure is an inspiration to anyone who has ever lost someone they love.

Always By My Side

Losing the love of my life and the fight to honour his memory

Two men came to personify British and German generalship in the Second World War: Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. They fought a series of extraordinary duels across several theatres of war which established them as two of the greatest captains of their age. Our understanding of leadership in battle was altered for ever by their electrifying personal qualities. Ever since, historians have assessed their outstanding leadership, personalities and skill. 
 
The careers of both began on the periphery of the military establishment and represent the first time military commanders proactively and systematically used (and were used by) the media as they came to prominence, first in North Africa, then in Normandy. Dynamic and forward-thinking, their lives also represent a study of pride, propaganda and nostalgia. Caddick-Adams tracks and compares their military talents and personalities in battle. Each brought something special to their commands. Rommel's breathtaking advance in May-June 1940 was nothing less than inspired. Montgomery is a gift for leadership gurus in the way he took over a demoralised Eighth Army in August 1942 and led it to victory just two months later. 
 
This compelling work is both scholarly and entertaining and marks the debut of a major new talent in historical biography.

Monty and Rommel: Parallel Lives

Romeo Dallaire

In conflicts around the world, there is an increasingly popular weapon system that needs negligible technology, is simple to sustain, has unlimited versatility, and an incredible capacity for both loyalty and barbarism. What are these cheap, renewable, plentiful, sophisticated, and expendable weapons? Children. 
 
This important book is part of a passionate personal mission against the use of child soldiers, by the three-star general who commanded the UN mission in Rwanda. 
 
When Romeo Dallaire was tasked with achieving peace there in 1994, he and his force found themselves caught up in a vortex of civil war and genocide. He left Rwanda a broken man, disillusioned, suicidal, a story he told in the award-winning international sensation Shake Hands with the Devil. 
 
Now, in They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, Dallaire provides an emotionally daring and intellectually enlightening introduction to the child soldier phenomenon, as well as concrete solutions for its total eradication. 
 
Dallaire speaks up for those without a voice - children in conflicts around the globe who do not choose to fight, but who through ill-fate and the accident of birth find their way into soldiering. This is a book that addresses one of the most harrowing, urgent and important issues of our time.

They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

Ross Kemp has encountered conflict and warfare the world over, broadcasting from some of the most volatile military hot-zones. From meeting the world's deadliest gangsters, to perhaps his hardest assignment of all; embedded with the British Army in Afghanistan's Helmand province, where he witnessed some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict and was trained in the tactics they use to stay alive. 
 
Stationed with British forces for his award-winning television documentaries, Ross Kemp has not only experienced the terror and exhilaration of life on the frontline, but also the courage and leadership of today's servicemen and women. The plight of our Armed Forces is one especially close to his heart, and here for the first time Kemp tells the breathtaking stories of commandos, medics, submariners, fighter pilots, infantrymen, sailors and engineers in daring raids, stirring last stands and acts of extreme valour. 
 
British Fighting Heroes is Ross Kemp's personal tribute to some of the most remarkable men and women to have served in the British Armed Forces during the two World Wars, many of them unsung or forgotten. From Sgt Major Stan Hollis, D-Day's only VC winner, to Freddie Spencer Chapman the reluctant war hero who spent three years behind enemy lines in Burma fighting guerrilla warfare against troops, each account is an extraordinary tale of courage, adventure and patriotic sacrifice.

Warriors

British Fighting Heroes

New York Times bestselling author Alex Kershaw has written the first full biography of one of the most remarkable men to have outwitted Hitler - Raoul Wallenberg, the young Swedish diplomat who almost single-handedly saved the lives of countless Hungarian Jews, at unimaginable risk and great cost to himself. As a Holocaust survivor said, 'Schindler saved hundreds. Wallenberg saved tens of thousands.' This is the story of how he achieved this and of his personal duel with Adolf Eichmann, the SS colonel charged with obliterating Hungarian Jewry, who sent half a million Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz. This confrontation reaches its climax in 1944 when Soviet and German troops are fighting hand-to-hand through the suburbs of Budapest and Eichmann's push for the Final Solution is personally opposed by Wallenberg. The book also sheds new light on Wallenberg's fate - he disappeared into the Soviet Union after the war to a highly controversial and disputed death. (The Americans were so determined to discover what happened to him that they made him an honorary citizen in order to prise information out of the Russians.) It's an inspiring story which moves at the pace of a master thriller-writer, but the truth behind it is heartbreaking.

To Save a People

Ray Jenkins

One of the last major untold stories of the war, this is the first-hand account of a conscientious objector born into a famous artistic family who, after the death of his brother on active service, decides to fight the Nazis and joins SOE. Barely 28 years of age he ends up as a leader of French resistance, set up by Jean Moulin, whose horrific death features in the story, and heads a massive underground movement of some 20,000 men. 
 
The book has been compiled by Ray Jenkins, a distinguished TV, film and radio dramatist from first-hand interviews, with the drama of raids, torture and sudden death ever present - at one point Francis Cammaerts is captured by the Gestapo. There is also an emotional theme as Francis's relationship with his wife, whom he has been able to tell nothing, suffers and he lives closely with the beautiful and legendary agent, Countess Krystina Skarbeck. 
 
A genuinely original contribution to the history of the resistance, Ray Jenkins's beautifully told story has been praised by the official historian of wartime intelligence, MRD Foot. 
 
Francis Cammaerts died in 2006 at the age of 90 after a distinguished career in education.

A Pacifist At War

The Silence of Francis Cammaerts

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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