Sub-titled 'A History of Those Who Rose to the Occasion and Those Who Didn't' written by a former officer in the Irish Guards. The book includes familiar battlefield heroes like Audie Murphy or 'H' Jones together with less well-known characters like Corporal Graham 'the bravest man at Waterloo', and the young Erwin Rommel decades before he became famous as the 'Desert Fox.' Those bucking the odds have to include Douglas Bader, Britain's flamboyant aircraft ace flying with his artificial legs, George Washington daringly crossing the Delaware, and John Paul Jones challenging the might of the Royal Navy. Joan of Arc was certainly one of those who had the courage of their convictions, while Sergeant York had to overcome his pacifist views in World War One France. There have been few better examples of the constant thread of valour than Joshua Chamberlain, the saviour of the Union position at Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, Michael Wittmann, the ultimate tank ace, or Albert Jacka, the Australian who many feel deserved not just one but three Victoria Crosses. O'Brien also pays homage to the brilliant codebreakers Alan Turing and Captain Reginald Hall RN, photographic experts such as Constance Babington Smith, and medical pioneers like Napoleon's great surgeon Baron Larrey or 'Weary' Dunlop, Australia's hero of the Kwai railway. All had an influence on warfare as great as any warrior. And those who didn't rise to the occasion? Many were too confident by half like Saddam Hussein who was to lead his country to ruin, the corpulent and boastful Hermann Goering, wrecking the plans of others at Dunkirk and Stalingrad, or even the inexperienced Jack Kennedy during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Other simply display fatal inattention like France's Constable Charles D'Albret at Agincourt, or General Ledlie at the Battle of the Crater. Flaws and obsessions can wreck the reputations of otherwise great men - Douglas MacArthur in Korea, Napoleon in Russia, Montgomery and Patton, due to their jealous feuding, and even Mark Antony who risked everything for such a non-military notion as love. Worst of all in warfare must be treachery and rank disobedience - Mark Clark vaingloriously capturing Rome instead of trapping the Germans, Lord Sackville refusing to charge at Minden, Mountbatten persisting with his disastrous raid at Dieppe, and Benedict Arnold changing sides to try to hand over West Point, becoming America's symbol of the ultimate traitor. And finally a streak of cruelty with unfeeling generals at the Easter Rising, Amritsar and My Lai. The ultimate judgement for those who received lavish praise or quite the opposite must be left to the reader. 288pp, well illustrated.

Sub-titled 'Tales from an English Nepali, 1944-2015', as a Gurkha officer, J. P. Cross has had many unusual experiences in his long career. For example he was attached to a Japanese battalion in Indochina that was fighting for the British against the Viet Minh, and the only photograph taken of this Japanese unit finally laying down its weapons appears in this book. Later he just managed to resolve a potentially deadly dispute between an offended Gurkha and a visiting South Vietnamese trainee at the Jungle Warfare School. He also describes several seemingly supernatural experiences while serving with troops from a culture where such things are firmly believed in. Gurkhas have served with the British for almost 200 years, first with the army of the East India Company, then with the Indian Army of the Raj, and then in 1947 becoming an integral part of the British Army. This anthology of articles from The Kukri, the Gurkha regimental journals by J. P. Cross, covers much of the past 60 years of their history taking in the last days of WWII and the Indonesian Confrontation in the 1960s. He also gives an insight into the everyday life, culture and beliefs of these renowned soldiers. 'The CO knew better but, still unconvinced that the evidence we have found was correct, presumed that I have trapped the prints of some local Ibans into his company's area and, out of sheer impishness, pretended I was ethereal.' 16 pages of photos including parachuting, a wedding, lecturing, a royal visit, home and leisure activities. 224pp.

Sub-titled 'The Rise and Fall of Ernst Hanstaengl Confidant of Hitler, Ally of Roosevelt', Hanstaengl was court jester, pianist and Foreign Press Chief for Hitler. He even claimed to have devised the chant of Sieg Heil. A Munich-born aristocratic eccentric, when he fell out with Hitler he fled to Britain where he was interned and transferred to America. He was the most unlikely CIA secret agent, yet he would play a central role in F.D.R's S-Project, informing on 400 leading Nazis and providing a detailed psychological profile of his once close friend, Hitler. Throughout the 1920s, "Putzi" introduced Hitler to German high society and helped to fund his projects, including the publication of Mein Kampf. In turn he became his Foreign Press Chief, but as Hitler rose to power, Putzi would recede into the background as the Führer's pianist. Eventually a falling out with Goebbels led to his defection to the Allied forces, a spurned attempt to atone for the monster he had created. Through newly declassified documents, interviews with surviving family members and original writing by Putzi himself, Peter Conradi reveals a remarkable life of conflicted loyalties in his exemplary piece of biographical writing is packed with colour and character. 352pp, paperback with fairly small print and archive photos reproduced, the book has all the elements of a gripping thriller.

By the bestselling author of SAS Band of Brothers and Zero Six Bravo, here are seven incredible escapes made by Second World War heroes, superhuman endurance, breath-taking bluff and nerve and the use of audacious disguise or wreaking total bloody mayhem, and all seven dared to win all. The one escape set in Greece was Cpt Roy Farran's 600 mile sea journey aboard a caique from Athens to Alexandria in August 1941. The two in North Africa during 1942-43 involved Cpl John 'Jack' Byrne in Operation Squatter and Lt Thomas Langton's march across the desert unknown to him during the Alamein Battle. There is one in France with F/O Lew Fiddick (RCAF), Capt Henry Druce and Lt Col Brian Franks in Operation Loyton around Moussey in the Vosges. All showed important language skills and the ability to get on with locals, and an element of luck. After his escape from PG78 at Sulmona Lt George Paterson transformed his pragmatic SAS skills to more of an SOE agent working with partisan resistance between the borders of Switzerland and Italy. Sgt John 'Gentleman Jim' Almonds supplied immediate details of minefields he had crossed. Lt James Hughes was the sole survivor of the successful Operation Pomegranate, the preliminary attack on San Egidio Airfield in January 1944 immediately prior to the Anzio landings. Taken together these decisions and actions became vital in the development and speedy conclusion to the war. Lewis reveals that behind the scenes authorities were making moves to repatriate some of the 50,000 Allied POWs. 332pp, colour and archive photos.

First published in 1982, we are thrilled to have this paperback reprint of what is now regarded as a modern classic. The story begins: 'My earliest memories are a confusion of hilly fields and dark, damp stables, and rats that scampered along the beams above my head. But I remember well enough the day of the horse sale. The terror of it stayed with me all my life. I was not yet six months old, a gangling, leggy colt who had never been further than a few feet from his mother. We were parted that day in the terrible hubbub of the auction ring and I was never to see her again. She was a fine working farm horse, getting on in years... she was sold within minutes... but somehow I was more difficult to dispose of. Perhaps it was the wild look in my eye as I circled the ring in desperate search of my mother... I was dragged along the lanes tied on a short rope to the tail board of a farm cart so that every twist and turn wrenched at my neck.' Young Albert adopts the colt, and then is called up to serve in the trenches of the First World War where he is reunited with his War Horse. An unforgettable story which ends at Christmastime in the village. 182pp, paperback.

'We felt an urge to document what we had witnessed. If we who had experienced it, I reasoned, did not reveal the bitter truth, people simply would not believe the extent of the Nazi's evil. I wanted to share our life, the events and our struggle to survive.' Thomas Geve was born in 1929 in Germany. From 1933 onwards, he and his family felt the full force of Nazi persecution. After years of constant danger and hardship, he and his mother were arrested and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 1943. 22 months later, Thomas was liberated, and after a period of recouperation was reunited with his father in London. After completing his studies and graduating with an engineering degree, Thomas moved to Israel in July 1950, raised a family and lived peacefully in retirement. When he was liberated at the age of 15, Thomas had survived the third concentration camp where he had been separated from his mother and left to fend for himself in the men's camp of Auschwitz I at the age of 13. On his eventual release, Thomas felt compelled to capture daily life in the death camps in more than 80 profoundly moving drawings. Infamous scenarios synonymous with this dark period of history were poignantly and accurately portrayed in simplistic detail, and for years Thomas continued to raise awareness about the Holocaust. Thomas experienced illness, witnessed physical brutality and murder of many inmates, and in his illustrated diary of his life and surroundings, recounted the quotidian work routine, cruelty of the guards, and his chronic hunger. 'As the women trudged passed, they hardly bothered to lift up their heads in greeting. Dressed in rags, their hair shorn and faces worn with worry and despair, they still had sufficient energy to shuffle along the dusty roadway. I reflected that weeks ago, these same women might have strolled along the streets of Budapest clad in elegant clothes, attracting the glance of many admirers...Trying to cheer them up, we bared our shave heads, waved our blue-white caps and forced a smile.' 32 of the naïve drawings are reproduced in colour. 332pp, paperback with other illus.

The leading British historian has teamed up with a gifted Brazilian artist who uses contemporary photographs as the basis for her full-colour digital renditions of poignant early 20th century photographs. The 200 unforgettable images have been retouched with realistic skin tones, filthy uniforms, the stern faces of men at the Nuremberg Rallies, a tiny little girl survivor of the bombing of Guernica, blindfolded German prisoners after the Dieppe Raid and poignant images from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising including bloodied children in striped uniforms at Auschwitz. The 200 unforgettable images are of conflicts and revolutions, key events and leading actors of the total wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45, and the civil and colonial struggles of the interwar period and the impact of these violent happenings on the lives of ordinary men and women across each of the world's continents. Each poignant picture is paired with a short explanatory text to give more context to the image and the book proceeds in a more or less chronological sequence, hard and harrowing, every single archive photograph capturing a moment in history. It is a tribute to the men and women, some heroes, some victims, who live through these terrifying times of fascism, nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, hatred, bigotry, racism and the politics of exclusion, division and isolation. The world is fragile and it takes less than we think to set it aflame. With superb colourisation which is a delicate and technical process and reproduced in 432 very large pages in this heavyweight tome with pagemarker, 8" x 9½".
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This is a stand-out volume among the many photographic histories of World War I, with the effects of the conflict vividly demonstrated in archive photos showing day to day life on the home fronts of the warring nations. Young Germans living in Britain are seen crowding round the German consulate as war breaks out, almost all wearing Panama hats, while over in Germany similarly hatted young men read the mobilisation orders posted on the Rathaus (Town Hall). The Grenadier Guards, including the Prince of Wales, are seen leaving for France, where the headgear of choice is a flat cap. Further afield, the Commander-in-Chief is seen marching his Turkish troops through Jerusalem, and the first Tasmanian contingent to leave Hobart throngs the decks of a departing ship. Spy fever was running riot and Britain's east coast and railway bridges are heavily guarded by Territorials, while the Dutch frontier has a barrier of revolving spikes. High school students are now working in the fields, and a German monk is seen tending horses. Propaganda posters announce that England Expects Every Man To Do His Duty. A Brussels school is used as a hospital, and even more extraordinarily the Orangery Palace in Potsdam houses hospital beds among the grandiose pillars, while the Royal Palace in St Petersburg is also requisitioned. In Britain, there are makeshift wards in the Great Hall of Birmingham University and the cloisters of Trinity College Cambridge. Refugees on the eastern front struggle to safety without shoes, and meanwhile women work in munitions factories, sew balloons and make bandages in this fascinating cross section of wartime life. 192pp, chronology, archive photos on every page.

First published under the sub-title in 1917 in New York, Albert Rhys Williams (1883-1962) was an American journalist, author and labour organiser who studied on a fellowship at Cambridge University. In 1914 he found work as a journalist with the magazine Outlook as a special war correspondent, with the duty of reporting the events of the Great War. He was arrested in Belgium and detained by Germans who suspected him of being a British spy. In the early days of the conflict, Williams had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Imperial German Army and, arrested in Belgium, they marched him into captivity. On his return to the USA, he published 'In the Claws of the German Eagle' in 1917. He then joined the New York Post and was sent to Petrograd to report on the conflict that was taking place in Russia following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, and he remained an ardent supporter of Russia until the end of his life. 'The horrible and incomprehensible hates and brutalities of the European War! Unspeakable atrocities! Men blood-lusting like a lot of tigers! Horrible they are indeed. But my experiences in the war zone render them no longer incomprehensible... Two weeks later I fell under the spell of the self-same Germans. That long gray column swinging on through Liege so mesmerised me that my natural revulsion against slaughter was changed to actual admiration. Had an officer right them thrust a musket into my hand, I could have mechanically fallen into step and fared forth to the killing of the French...' 142 pages.

22 Special Air Service Regiment is world-famous, and famously secretive. For the first time, step inside the SAS Camp at Hereford garrison and discover what the most elite soldiers of the British armed forces are really like off duty, on guard and up close. Lavers (not her real name) spent three years working in support services inside the closed SAS garrison camp where she got to know those who refer to themselves as 'Geezers'. They are the toughest and most resourceful soldiers in the world and only the cream of the crop get through the rigorous training programme to achieve their status as 'badged'. This elite force deserves their famous motto 'Who Dares Wins'. They cannot be identified, and their true job is known to very few people, for their own security and the protection of others, and they are prohibited from talking about their careers. So who are they? What are they really like? Lavers gets to know them as people rather than by their fearsome reputation and offers a behind-the-scenes look at life which is funny, heart breaking and compassionate, full frontal and with no holds barred. She concludes that although undoubtedly brave, somebody in the Regiment was always there to pick up the pieces, doctors and physios on hand and welfare officers and 'they really did seem a bit helpless sometimes and, in that regard, I felt desperately sorry for them.' They have to live their lives in secret. 336pp.