Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Hugh G. Allison

Culloden was the last battle on British soil. It marked the end of clan culture and was the harbinger of the Highland Clearances. It ensured the inevitability of the American Revolution and increased the outpouring of Scots across the globe. It is the only battle that British Army regiments are not permitted to include in their battle honours; the only battle that Bonnie Prince Charlie ever lost; and the only battle that the Duke of Cumberland ever won. 
 
Culloden is a battlefield, a graveyard and an iconic site that draws people from all parts of the world. And as they come, they bring with them their stories and their father's father's stories. 
 
These stories tell of civil war, of love, of the unexpected and even of the supernatural. They are peopled by the second-sighted, by clan chiefs and by others who have kept family secrets for centuries. 
 
The battlefield is a poignant location, resonant with past deeds and emotive memories. These Culloden tales are offered as a unique record to the power of the place.

Culloden Tales

Stories from Scotland's Most Famous Battlefield

Loung Ung

A major film, co-written and directed by Angelina Jolie 
 
Until the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights and being cheeky to her parents. 
 
When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Loung's family fled their home and were eventually forced to disperse to survive. Loung was trained as a child soldier while her brothers and sisters were sent to labour camps. The surviving siblings were only finally reunited after the Vietnamese penetrated Cambodia and started to destroy the Khmer Rouge. 
 
Bolstered by the bravery of one brother, the vision of the others and the gentle kindness of her sister, Loung forged on to create for herself a courageous new life. 
 
First They Killed My Father is an unforgettable book told through the voice of the young and fearless Loung. It is a shocking and tragic tale of a girl who was determined to survive despite the odds.

First They Killed My Father

Film tie-in

A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Martin Dillon

Roy Bradford

More than half a century after his death, Lt Col. Robert Blair Mayne is still regarded as one of the greatest soldiers in the history of military special operations. He was the most decorated British soldier of the Second World War, receiving four DSOs, the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'honneur, and he pioneered tactics used today by the SAS and other special operations units worldwide. 
 
 Rogue Warrior of the SAS tells the remarkable life story of 'Colonel Paddy', whose exceptional physical strength and uniquely swift reflexes made him a fearsome opponent. But his unorthodox rules of war and his resentment of authority would deny him the ultimate accolade of the Victoria Cross. 
 
 Drawing on personal letters and family papers, declassified SAS files and records, together with the Official SAS Diary compiled in wartime and eyewitness accounts from many who served with him, the picture emerges of a soldier who, although a flawed hero, was unquestionably one of the most distinctive combatants of the campaigns in the Western Desert and Europe.

Rogue Warrior of the SAS

The Blair Mayne Legend

Nicholas Davies

This explosive book reveals the conspiracy between British Military Intelligence and the gunman of the UDA who targeted and killed both Republican terrorists and ordinary Catholics. 
 
 The secret partnership was sanctioned at the highest level of the British government and full details of planned operations, including killings, were passed directly to its Joint Intelligence Committee in London. 
 
 Ten-Thirty-Three was the codename given to the agent who was fed with all the details necessary for Loyalist gunmen to carry out their murderous activities. But somewhere along the line the power went to Ten-Thirty-Three’s head and he became increasingly unpredictable. It wasn’t long before he was completely out of control, and his Military Intelligence bosses had the makings of a major catastrophe on their hands… 
 
 This extraordinary true story lifts the lid on shocking abuses of power in Belfast in the 1980s and 1990s.

Ten-Thirty-Three

The Inside Story of Britain's Secret Killing Machine in Northern Ireland

Aaron Edwards

Aden, 20 June 1967: two army Land Rovers burn ferociously in the midday sun. The bodies of British soldiers litter the road. Thick black smoke bellows above Crater town, home to insurgents who are fighting the British-backed Federation government. Crater had come to symbolise Arab nationalist defiance in the face of the world’s most powerful empire. 
 
Hovering 2,000 ft. above the smouldering destruction, a tiny Scout helicopter surveys the scene. Its passenger is the recently arrived Commanding Officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mitchell. Soon the world’s media would christen him ‘Mad Mitch’, in recognition of his controversial reoccupation of Crater two weeks later. 
 
Mad Mitch was truly a man out of his time. Supremely self-confident and debonair, he was an empire builder, not dismantler, and railed against the national malaise he felt had gripped Britain’s political establishment. Drawing on a wide array of never-before-seen archival sources and eyewitness testimonies, Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law tells the remarkable story of inspiring leadership, loyalty and betrayal in the final days of British Empire. It is, above all, a shocking account of Britain’s forgotten war on terror.

Mad Mitch's Tribal Law

Aden and the End of Empire

Maggie Craig

'A racily written, well-researched and heart-warming account' Scots Magazine 
 
Too many historians have ignored the role of women in the '45. 
 This book aims to redress the balance. 
 
 Damn' Rebel Bitches takes a totally fresh approach to the history of the Jacobite Rising by telling fascinating stories of the many women caught up in the turbulent events of 1745-46. 
 
 Drawn from original documents and letters, Maggie Craig brings their stories to life in this often touching and always engrossing reframed history. 
 
'A modern classic' The Herald 
 
 'Bold and argumentative...resounds with authority' Scotland on Sunday

Damn' Rebel Bitches

The Women of the '45

Steven Preece

Steven Preece was a Royal Marine Commando from 1983 to 1990, serving first at entry-level and then as a lance-corporal. Amongst the Marines is Steven's first-hand account of his years as an elite soldier, focusing directly on the excessive and often shocking lifestyle of the Marines during this time, and impact this had on his own personality and behaviour. 
 
Preece fulfilled his childhood ambition by earning the coveted Green Beret when he was 18. He was unaware, however, of the brutal rite of passage that awaited him and all the other 'pieces of skin' [new recruits]. Violence in the Marines, as Steven discovered, was not limited to the battlefield but a continual part of a pervasive culture of bullying and aggression. 
 
It did not take long for Preece to be accepted into this culture and to adopt it as his own. On duty he was fit, committed and loyal, while off duty he displayed a mammoth capacity for drinking, fighting and womanising. On home leave, Steven found it increasingly hard to adapt to civilian life. His drinking sessions in local pubs frequently ended in fights with the locals and even in violence against members of his own family. Preece earned a reputation amongst his fellow Marines for pranks and dangerous behaviour; and this eventually led him to be court-maritialled. To his relief and surprise, however, Preece was fully acquitted by the court. 
 
Amongst the Marines is an unflinching exposé of the culture of the Marines, from foul practical jokes and rough justice to the off-duty orgies of drink, sex and violence. It is a no-holds-barred account of the many shocking incidents Preece witnessed and participated in, from his first day as a new recruit to his exit from the Marines with his reputation intact and his scores settled once and for all.

Amongst the Marines

The Untold Story

Tommy Macpherson

Richard Bath

With three Military Crosses, three Croix de guerre, a Légion d'honneur and a papal knighthood for his heroics during the Second World War, Sir Tommy Macpherson is the most decorated living soldier of the British Army. 
 
 Yet for 65 years the Highlander's story has remained untold. Few know how, aged 21, he persuaded 23,000 SS soldiers of the feared Das Reich tank column to surrender, or how Tommy almost single-handedly stopped Tito's Yugoslavia annexing the whole of north-east Italy. Twice captured, he escaped both times, marching through hundreds of miles of German-held territory to get home. 
 
 Still a schoolboy when war broke out, Tommy quickly matured into a legendary commando, and his remarkable story features a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle.

Behind Enemy Lines

The Autobiography of Britain's Most Decorated Living War Hero

William Stone

William Stone died on 10 January 2009 aged 108. He received a hero's funeral. Born in rural Devon, he joined the navy during the First World War, travelled the globe just before the British Empire's light began to fade and saw action in some of the most significant sea battles of the Second World War. Afterwards, he returned to Devon to run a barber's shop, an altogether more peaceable existence. 
 
 As time passed, he became one of a dwindling number of men still alive who had served in the Great War. This meant that for some of the most momentous anniversaries clocked up recently - including the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War - William was a guest of honour. 
 
 This autobiography bridges two wars and encompasses the remarkable episodes and adventures. It was an ordinary life lived in extraordinary times. He died at a time when the navy is attempting to embrace new ships that bear scant resemblance to those that William knew and face the challenges of a world that shrinks with every bold technological advance. His was a different kind of boldness. This is his astonishing story.

Hero of the Fleet

Two World Wars, One Extraordinary Life - The Memoirs of Centenarian William Stone

John Randall

M J Trow

In 1945, John Randall was the first Allied officer to enter Bergen-Belsen – the concentration camp that would reveal the horrors of the Holocaust to the world. Randall was one of that league of extraordinary gentlemen handpicked for suicidally dangerous missions behind enemy lines in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany throughout the Second World War. 
 
He was a man of his class and of his times. He hated the Germans, liked the French and was unimpressed by the Americans and the Arabs. He was an outrageous flirt, as might be expected of a man who served in Phantom alongside film stars David Niven and Hugh Williams. He played rugby with Paddy Mayne, the larger-than-life colonel of the SAS and winner of four DSOs. He pushed Randolph Churchill, son of the Prime Minister, out of an aeroplane. He wined and dined in nightclubs as part of the generation that lived for each day because they might not see another. 
 
This extraordinary true story, partly based on previously unpublished diaries, presents a different slant on that mighty war through the eyes of a restless young man eager for action and adventure.

The Last Gentleman of the SAS

A Moving Testimony from the First Allied Officer to Enter Belsen at the End of the Second World War

Simon Low

As a former fighter in the legendary French Foreign Legion, Simon Low thought he had seen it all. Then he was posted to Iraq. Employed as a private military contractor - a 'hired gun' - his assignment was to guard the deadly convoy routes out of Baghdad. 
 
Once there, Simon quickly realised that no one could be trusted, including the US military. Whether sending him on perilously haphazard missions or, in one terrifying incident, knowingly opening fire on him, the Americans often proved as dangerous as the insurgents. 
 
Simon and his staunch 'oppo' Dave faced the daily terror of suicide bombers, armed ambushes and grenade attacks, and also had to keep a close watch on their ill-prepared Iraqi comrades. Incompetence or betrayal from within could be fatal, but a far greater fear was that of capture, with prisoners subjected to torture and slow death. 
 
Commissioned to courier a large quantity of cash through bandit country, Simon lost patience with his high-handed paymasters and devised a plan of his own for the money . . . 
 
The Boys from Baghdad is an action-packed account of life as a soldier of fortune in the most controversial conflict of our age. With grim, earthy humour, Simon's eyewitness descriptions of Iraq as it spirals into bloody chaos provide a unique, uncompromising insight into the theatre of war.

The Boys from Baghdad

From the Foreign Legion to the Killing Fields of Iraq

Tim Carroll

The Dodger is the long-awaited story of Johnny Dodge, a wartime hero and a pivotal figure in the escapade immortalised in the legendary Hollywood film The Great Escape. 
 
Of all the Allied prisoners who broke out of Hermann Göring's 'escape proof' camp in the famous episode of March 1944, Johnny Dodge was the most intriguing. American-born Dodge was a cousin by marriage of Winston Churchill. When the Second World War broke out, he volunteered for the Army but was quickly captured after the debacle of Dunkirk. He became a prisoner of war and an inveterate escapologist and troublemaker - eventually becoming one of the ringleaders of the 'Great Escape'. 
 
 Surviving the murderous Gestapo, he was thrown into a VIP compound of Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the orders of Heinrich Himmler - but escaped once more. After recapture, Johnny was spirited away by the SS to a meeting in Berlin with Hitler's interpreter, who sent him on a clandestine mission to his cousin in Downing Street. His odyssey through the dying embers of the Third Reich to Switzerland and freedom in the company of a louche Nazi apparatchik is the last curious escapade in the story of Johnny's adventurous life. 
 
 The Dodger draws upon Dodge's voluminous private papers, including photographs taken inside prison camps and letters home, casting revealing new light on the myth of the Great Escape.

The Dodger

The Extraordinary Story of Churchill's Cousin and the Great Escape

Claude Choules

Before his death at the age of 110 in May 2011, Claude Choules was the last man alive who had served in both world wars. 
 
Claude learned life's lessons during a rural childhood in England and later in the Royal Navy as a boy sailor, before graduating to become an explosives expert in the Australian navy. 
 
In his 80s, Claude began working on his memoirs with the help of his daughters, and The Last of the Last is a riveting account of his lifetime that vividly mirrors how the last century unfolded. 
 
Claude had the insight of an ordinary man thrust to the forefront of international furore. He was opposed to the glorification of war, but his charming anecdotes honour a generation called upon to serve not once but twice. This engaging, wryly humorous autobiography reflects the amiable nature of a truly unique man.

The Last of the Last

The Final Survivor of the First World War

Lofty Large

Lofty Large is, quite simply, an SAS legend. 
 
 He joined the army aged 15 in February 1946 and soon saw service in Germany and Hong Kong. By early 1951 the thundering engines of the Empire Orwell were transporting him and hundreds of others towards their first taste of war at the sharp end: Korea. He was wounded in action and captured as a prisoner-of-war by the enemy at the battle of the Imjin River. On his release two years later he was declared 'unfit for further military service'. Lofty Large refused to give up on his military career and defied the odds, passing the SAS selection course and going on to enjoy a long and eventful career with the Special Air Service. 
 
 With that elite group Lofty served all over the world: in the mind-numbing cold, in the blazing desert heat and in sweat-drenched jungle warfare. He faced minefields , traps and ambushes, as well as bombs, bullets, rockets and napalm. He is the first to admit he also experienced a lot of luck, not the kind which wins money in gambling or business but the kind which means, when the smoke clears, that you are the bastard still standing. 
 
 In his introduction to SAS Soldier Against The Odds, Andy McNab says Lofty was a survivor, 'but it's not just about luck. He is too modest to say that it's also about guts, thinking faster than the enemy and being willing to go further than they will to survive. That takes courage and skill." This book shows that Lofty Large, in winning his legendary SAS status, had more than his share of both those attributes.

Soldier Against The Odds

From Korean War to SAS

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