Military

This is the story of the "other" D-Day invasion, this one in the Pacific Ocean, which would turn the tide of the war against Japan in the summer of 1944. On June 14 1944, little more than a week after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, another mighty fleet steamed towards its own D-Day landing. The target of this mighty US armada was the Marianas Island group, which included Saipan, home to an important Japanese base, and Guam, the first American territory captured in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. When the brutal fighting ended eight... read more

The Horse Soldiers is the true, dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who entered Afghanistan immediately following September 11, 2001 and, riding to war on horses, defeated the Taliban. Heavily outnumbered, they nonetheless succeed in capturing the strategic Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, where they are welcomed as liberators as they ride on horseback into the city, the streets thronged with Afghans overjoyed that the Taliban have been kicked out. The soldiers rest easy, as they feel they have accomplished t... read more

This gripping and bestselling account of the Kokoda campaign is now available in a superbly packaged, hardback gift edition, illustrated with almost 150 photographs. Kokoda was a defining battle for Australia - a small force of young, ill-equipped Australians engaged a highly experienced and hitherto unstoppable Japanese force on a narrow, precarious jungle track and defeated them. A bestseller in both hardback and paperback, this edition is illustrated with photos of what it was really like - many taken from the prize-winning work... read more

Operation Fortitude was the ingenious web of deception spun by the Allies to mislead the Nazis as to how and where the D-Day landings were to be mounted. 'One of the most creative intelligence operations of all time' - Kim Philby The story of how this web was woven is one of intrigue, personal drama, ground-breaking techniques, internal resistance, and good fortune. It is a tale of double agents, black radio broadcasts, phantom armies, 'Ultra' decrypts, and dummy parachute drops. These diverse tactics were intended to c... read more

In 1942, Lieutenant-Commander Ian Fleming was personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence - the dynamic figure behind James Bond's fictional chief, 'M'. Here, Fleming had a brilliant idea: why not set up a unit of authorised looters, men who would go in hard with the front-line troops and steal enemy intelligence? Known as '30 Assault Unit', they took part in the major campaigns of the Second World War, landing on the Normandy beaches and helping to liberate Paris. 30AU's final amazing coup was to seize the entire arch... read more

Within days of North Korea

The Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 is a military disaster of enduring fascination. For the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the island, Peter Thompson tells the explosive story of the Malayan campaign, the siege of Singapore, the ignominious surrender to a much smaller Japanese force, and the Japanese occupation through the eyes of those who were there - the soldiers of all nationalities and members of Singapore's beleaguered population.

As far as Colin Berry's family were concerned, he'd gone to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban to market low-cost modular housing. The truth was much more complicated. In fact, Berry, a former soldier, had been recruited by British intelligence to secretly buy back weapons systems which had been delivered to the Mujahideen during their struggle against the Soviets. His work involved reconnaissance missions to remote mountain villages where he was able to see first hand the ravaging effects of decades of warfare. Back in Kabu... read more

War and Pieces is an autobiographical third-person account of one man's experiences in the Navy during the Second World War. John Pilgrim enlists for the Navy because "If the world was about to end he wanted to go out with his guns blazing". His training, first at Devonport naval base, later near Wellington, is interspersed with stories of mateship, chasing "sheilas", getting drunk for the first time, discovering jazz, sketching, and generally grabbing fun where he can, because in wartime, who knows if it will be the last time. Pil... read more

The Battle of Alamein in 1942 was of enormous political and military significance. It brought a sense of victory to Britain grown weary from defeat. As well as providing an overview of the battle in its strategic context, Jon Latimer draws on the experience of the men who fought.

From the first recorded battle, fought between the Canaanites and the Egyptians at Megiddo, to the modern era of Mutually Assured Destruction, warfare is as old as human history itself. Battle is the definitive record of this remarkable but brutal story. Battle features indispensable detail and insight into every aspect of war, providing you with the ultimate reference to 5,000 years of armed combat. The conflicts - from classical times to the present day, pinpoints the causes, events, and consequences of each war. The generals - f... read more

This guide explains what actually happened during World War II, day by day, rather than what was reported at the time. From the miseries of the ration queues to the romance of Hollywood and the sounds of Glenn Miller, readers can feel what it was really like to live through those turbulent times. Hardback

The dramatic story of the men who fought a new and terrifying kind of war amidst the carnage of the trenches in World War I: the British pioneer volunteers who were the first tank-men into battle. Inspired by a visit to northeast France to witness the excavation of a remarkably intact First World War tank from beneath a suburban vegetable plot near the town of Cambrai, Christy Campbell -- then defence correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph -- began to piece together the little-known story of the young men who formed the British Tan... read more

In this landmark book, William Shawcross examines the state of the Western Alliance after the Iraqi War and makes - powerfully, persuasively, controversially - his case for the removal of Saddam Hussein's government. The Cold War certainties that had seemed so fixed in the 20th century were overturned by the war in Iraq. Saddam's forces were the battlefield victims of a brutally quick war of shock and awe. No less shocked and awed were some of America's former allies: "old" Europe, large blocks of the United Nations, and half the... read more

In the summer of 1940, the French army was one of the largest and best in the world, confident of victory. In the space of a few nightmarish weeks all that changed as the French and their British allies were crushed and eight million people fled their homes. Richard Vinen's new book describes the consequences of that defeat. It does so not by looking at political leaders in Vichy or Paris or London but rather at those who were caught up in daily horrors of war. It describes the fate of a French prisoner of war who was punished beca... read more