In the summer of 1914, Lancaster, the ancient county town of what is properly the County Palatine of Lancaster, remained essentially the market town it had been for centuries, having been granted a borough charter in 1193 by King John. A key town on the main road from London to Carlisle (the modern A6), the Lancaster Canal opened in 1797, the railway had come early to Lancaster, there was an ancient grammar school and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. and since the 18th century the castle had been a prison. At the outbreak of the First World War panic buying led to price rises for sugar in particular and many grocers rationed their supplies. The first news of the war was referred to the 5th (Territorial) Battalion of the King?s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, which was due to begin its annual training near Kirkby Lonsdale on 2nd August. Training was cancelled and all units recalled to base, directed to guard the docks and warships in Barrow-in-Furness. Then they were sent by train to Didcot to guard the GWR line between Reading and Didcot and moved on to Sevenoaks before they embarked for France in February 1915. All those serving in the first two years of the war were volunteers and they suffered quite disproportionate losses. The 1st Battalion of the King?s Own formed part of the initial British Expeditionary Force and was soon in action at Mons and Le Cateau. Among the first to lose his life was their Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Alfred McNair Dykes, a veteran of the Boer War, along with three officers and 83 other ranks including Private John Carney of Ridge Street among many other Lancaster men. The town was out of range for shelling from the sea or aerial bombardment, but did experience an explosion at its munitions factory in 1917. Apart from this the Mayor and council endeavoured to continue with their primary duties as far as possible in running the town. The Lancaster men received many awards for gallantry. 116pp in large softback with many archive photos and posters.

Sub-titled 'A History of the 12th (Pioneers) King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry 1914-1918'. Little is known or understood of the contribution made by the thousands of men who served with the original Pioneer Battalions. Building and repairing roads, bridges, railway lines, gun emplacements, and laying barbed wire to protect the front line were just some of the tasks that they performed on a regular basis. Fortunately the subject of the British Army's logistical support in the war zone during the new industrialised warfare that developed during 1914 and 1918 is now being examined in greater detail. The initial training the Battalion received laid the foundation of the spirit of discipline and self-sacrifice for which it was noted, whether serving with the Division or detached for special duty. When sent to Flanders for the Third Battalion of Ypres, their services were the subject of highly complimentary reports from the Corps and Army Commanders. The first person to be acknowledged in this reproduction of the history must be the original author, Captain R. Ede England, whose intimate knowledge of this Battalion allowed him to describe in detail the part it played and the difficulties experienced by these former miners and engineers who found themselves caught up in the world's first truly industrialised global war. The photographs included were taken by members of the Battalion, despite the fact that Army Regulations forbade the use of cameras at the Front. With use of recollections of former members and the Battalion's war diary as the basic framework on which to hang the stories of battles fought and hideous conditions endured, Captain England's approach to the telling of the story appears somewhat light-hearted but this simply may reflect his ability to see a lighter side to the grim reality that was all around him. Of course there were at the time many comical articles published in The Wipers Times by another Pioneer Battalion. Captain England also refers to the extent of the damage to the towns and cities of Northern France, and even to the very nature of the soil over which the battles were waged over four years. His figures show that during the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917, the 12th KOYLI laid 29 miles of light track railway carrying some 18,000 tons of ammunition in one week alone. The original readers of Captain England's book would have been familiar with the political, social industrial background of the time and such names as Maconochie's Stew, only one of a number of canned food stuffs that developed an unfortunate reputation with the troops. The Battalion performed with such distinction it gained the nickname 'The Yorkshire Guards'. 188pp, very well illustrated with photographs and map.

Like other towns across the country, Northampton was changed forever in how people in the town lived, worked and endured the Great War of 1914-18. It changed the way industry operated, broke down barriers and created opportunity, particularly for women. Homes lost their breadwinners. Industries were forced to change long-held views and working practices. Wasteland was ploughed and planted to increase crop yields for food, families dug up their gardens, the Army formed Home Guard units, workers were persuaded to buy War Bonds, and in many places Zeppelins successfully crossed the Channel and bombed towns. This was a people's war in all respects. Northampton at this time had a population of around 95,000 living in mainly terraced, poor-quality housing, with poor sanitation. Of that total, 29,700 were men of working age with the main employer being the shoe industry. The rest of the workforce held down jobs in engineering, the various breweries, flour mills or the building industry. But in that summer of 1914 the Castle Ashby 32nd Annual Flower Show went ahead as planned with a panel of horticultural experts giving their verdicts in the judging of over 1260 entries in a variety of gardening categories, and the Annual August Parade went ahead, headed by the Brixworth Brass Band. Around the same time, enlisted men of the Northamptonshire Regiment, training at Ashridge Park Hertfordshire, were ordered back to Northampton. On the food front, impending war pushed up prices on staple foods like bacon, cheese, butter and sugar, but it was widely believed that the conflict would be short-lived. Business owners and people with German names found themselves under pressure, verbally abused or their premises attacked. The shoe industry however saw a sudden increase in business - the army needed boots. Here too is the story of Northampton's remarkable people and how they helped Belgian refugees who had fled the German invasion, organised fundraising events for the troops in local hospitals, accepted soldiers of the Welsh Fusiliers into their homes, and worked long hours producing boots for the army. Against a background of key military events, the book celebrates the city's contribution to the war effort. With poor quality but nevertheless interesting archive photos, 142pp in large softback.

Steel production and downstream manufacturing would be perpetually embedded in the military legacy of this seat of industrial innovation and production. The Vickers steel foundry was established in Sheffield in 1828. Following the manufacture of the factory's first artillery in 1890, Sheffield expanded to find itself a leading supplier in the First World War, feeding the military with shells, artillery, naval guns, armour plating, aircraft parts, torpedoes, helmets and bayonets. A proud tradition of answering a call to the colours spawned the 84th Regiment of Foot, the Loyal Independent Sheffield Volunteers of the 1700s, the Hallamshire Rifle Volunteers raised in 1859, and the Sheffield Squadron, Yeomanry Cavalry. The 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War would also have an enduring legacy - the Sheffield Wednesday Football Stadium was named Spion Kop, while local road names include Ladysmith Avenue and Mafeking Place. On 1st July 1916, the Sheffield City Battalion fought in an heroic and costly but hopeless action on the Somme to capture the village of Serre. Through the Second World War right up to Afghanistan, the city's men and women in uniform have not been found wanting. The York and Lancaster Regiment elected to disband when the British Army was reorganised in 1968, only one of two regiments to do so. The colours were laid up for the last time in the Regiment's own St. George's Memorial Chapel in Sheffield Cathedral. The uniquely titled Hallamshires would in the Second World War ensure that Sheffield's military pride will be indelibly inscribed in perpetuity in the city's legacy. They proudly wore the polar bear shoulder patch that identified them as members of the 49th Division, and from the frozen Norwegian and Icelandic theatres to North-West Europe, the battalion led the division across the Seine, the Dutch border, and finally the Rhine as the war drew to a close. 128 page very well illustrated large paperback, with eight pages of colour images and maps.

The Life of Captain Aidan Liddell VC, MC who won the fourth Air VC in the summer of 1915. Scholar, scientist, naturalist, astronomer, musician, aviator, photographer and diarist, Aidan Liddell embraced the challenges of a new century with enthusiasm. And thankfully his words live on. Daybell draws extensively on Captain Liddell's own letters and diaries, compelling and moving words supported by other contemporary documents to provide a vivid picture of the squalor and danger of war, the backbreaking hardship of trench life, and the challenges of pioneer air fighting. It is also a story of growing up in a devout and prosperous family, of a Jesuit education at Stonyhurst College, and of Edwardian Oxford before the Great War. It is about a very closeknit and patriotic family dealing with the adversity of war. Aidan Liddell was a decent, brave and intensely likeable young man and his story deserves to be told for the sake of countless others like him who fought bravely for King and Empire with a fervour that is difficult to imagine today. He served with the 3rd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and Royal Flying Corps. 'Talk of dirt and unshaveness. It's now one month and twelve days since I had a bath and have been in the trenches now for 24 days with one solitary attempt to wash about ten days ago.' (November 1914). One month later: 'It's a war with no glamour or glory... modern weapons are too deadly, and the whole art of war, and all tactics is laid down in our books, and the German dittoes, has been quite altered...' 'I thought at first a shell had hit us and knocked the tail off, a piece getting me in the process.' - 3rd August 1915. Riveting, ghastly, this gentleman was awarded the VC, the highest military award for the British Empire and seemingly cheated almost certain death. He lived on to be proclaimed a hero lying on a stretcher, cigarette in hand, smiling and waving for the camera yet despite rallying bravely, he died of his wounds a month after the action. A Pen & Sword publication, originally 2005 and here in facsimile reprint of the original. 300 pages, well illustrated.

Sub-titled 'A Story of Education, Evacuation and Endurance in the Second World War', the book marks the first time that the extraordinary tales of drama and trauma experienced by many English schools has been collected into a single book. It has been made possible by the Association of Representatives of Old Pupils' Societies (AROPS). Founded in 1971, this group of old boys' and old girls' organisations had at the time of publication more than 260 members. It decided to conduct a survey to discover what actually happened during the years 1939-45 and tracked the movements of schools and the stories that emerged covered a truly amazing diversity of experiences. Here are schools in the heart of the country who are virtually untouched by the global conflict, schools in towns and cities where staff suffered the knowledge that, after the previous night's air raids, they would not be seeing some of their pupils again, and there are stories of hard work, commitment, bravery and doggedness and often humour. The extreme disruption and privations on these young lives is difficult to imagine today. With over 200 contributions, the list of schools begins with Adcote School in Shrewsbury, and includes Batley Grammar, City of London School for Girls, Croydon High School, Lancing College, Pocklington School in York which hosted Hymers College from Hull, Walthamstow Hall in Sevenoaks to Wycombe Abbey School High Wycombe where for four years girls spent their lives in enforced educational exile at such schools as Malvern Girls and Cheltenham Ladies' College. Wycombe Abbey rejoiced at their reunion in May 1946. Entries differ in length. Slim 80 pages, 20 archive photos of good quality, 2005 rare Phillimore publication.

The Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway was a male icon in mid-20th century America, celebrated through numerous articles and images in pulp magazines which promoted what we would now regard as a highly sexist version of masculinity. Typically this included muscle-bound Tarzan types conquering a range of challenges from the impenetrable jungle to a yielding semi-naked heroine. The author of this book draws attention to the levels of post-traumatic stress in war veterans not only of World War II but also the Korean and Vietnam wars, and how American culture created a narrative of coping that arose out of the need to relive the war experience. Men's adventure magazines became a place where men could safely engage with sensationalised stories based on the traumas of battle, and these magazines also included pseudo-medical columns and ubiquitous female pinups. Wartime images of women embody the American ideal of womanhood, faithful, wholesome, often pictured with flags or saluting aircraft. But after the War the tone changed, becoming aggressively sexualised, using titillation and bondage to bolster a bruised masculine ego, and prompting one feminist to describe men's mags as an "undeclared war against American women". In 1959, a Man's Magazine article was entitled "Ernest Hemingway's Private War with Adolf Hitler", combining Hemingway's experiences on the Siegfried Line with his march to Paris. Such articles played down the fact that Hemingway was a war correspondent and never actually involved in fighting, although Rogue Magazine profiled him as suffering "ten concussions in combat". The "liberation of Paris" is one of the most persistent of Hemingway legends, and it is told here in a larger than life style, with "Papa" Hemingway, as he was known, depicted on the cover in his guise of he-man extraordinaire, together with an accompanying article on "How to prolong your sex life". A fascinating study of pulp magazines and Hemingway's role within them. 177pp, contrasting colour photos.
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The Spanish Civil War raged for three years from 1936 almost until the outbreak of World War II, when the Fascist General Franco finally defeated the democratically elected Republican government. Franco was supported by the Fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler in Italy and Germany, while European nations including Britain and France maintained neutrality, even in the face of such atrocities as the bombing of civilians at Guernica, immortalised in the painting by Picasso. This gripping book tells the story of the defeated Republicans, many of whom joined the French army to fight the Nazis in World War II, although when the occupation of France brought Hitler's troops closer to the Spanish border there were also those who collaborated with the German army. In the autumn of 1938 the desperate Republican troops retreated eastwards with obsolete weaponry supplied by their so-called ally Stalin, while the US continued to ban the supply of arms to either side. When Barcelona fell, many refugees crossed the Pyrenees to France as German planes strafed the columns. The refugees were herded into concentration camps, for instance Gurs near the Pyrenean border, later used as a transit centre for Auschwitz and other extermination camps. The Vichy regime seized the opportunity of using Republican refugees as cheap labour, some of them in German civil and military engineering projects. The author follows those who escaped to north Africa and retells the incredible story of the double agent Pujol, who established 22 fictitious spies in Britain supplying fake intelligence to the Germans. 114,000 people who disappeared at the hands of the Franco dictatorship are still unaccounted for, as leaders like de Gaulle and Churchill left Spain to sort out its own affairs. 304pp, glossary, photos.

The bestselling military historian thrillingly tells the stories of seven dramatic World War Two escapes executed by members of the British Special Air Service (SAS). No food, water and out of ammo. Hunted and on the run with the dreaded certainty of discovery looming between recapture and safe haven. Would you give up? From the earliest years of the War to its explosive closing stages, readers are plunged into the dark heart of Mussolini's Fascist Italy, held captive in a heavily fortified POW camp in Greece, and in the coastal fortress of Tobruk in Occupied Libya. Whether scaling the treacherous war-torn Vosges Mountains in France, or crossing 150 miles of sun-blasted Sahara Desert crawling with General Erwin Rommel's fearsome Afrika Korps, it took cunning, incredible courage and die-hard fearlessness to pull off these exhilarating escapes. 'Those men would go on to form the core of the SAS Nazi-hunting unit that would track down some of the most elusive war criminals.' Based on debriefings on letters, Lewis recounts the most terrifying and adrenalin-fuelled days and nights and the uncommon bravery of these heroes. 332pp, eight pages of photos. Please note contents are the same as SAS Great Escapes.

How did a former newspaper proprietor who had no medical or psychological knowledge or training manage to successfully establish the charitable foundation now known as Blind Veterans UK, or St Dunstan's? Men from Britain and around the Commonwealth - Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Rhodesia and South Africa - had been shelled, bombed, mined, shot at, and gassed on the insatiable killing fields of the Western Front and on other fronts and had emerged bleeding, broken and - all of them - sightless. The book attempts to pay adequate tribute to the St Dunstaners and the myriad of doctors, nurses, VADs, volunteers, family and friends through the soldiers' journey to 'Victory Over Blindness'. Here are true and heartwarming stories of great courage, comradeship and dedication on the part of Sir Arthur Pearson and his staff, and of the astonishing feats achieved by those who prove that to be blind does not necessarily preclude gainful employment, romance, love, marriage and a happy family life. The book recounts Pearson's personal journey from his school years and early adulthood where signs of his charitable nature first started to emerge with social projects such as the Fresh Air Fund and founding publications such as Pearson's Weekly and the Daily Express. 191pp, large well illustrated softback.