England Wars

The loss of British bombers over Occupied Europe began to reach alarming levels in 1941. Could it be that the Germans were using a sophisticated form of radar to direct their night fighters and anti-aircraft guns at the British bombers? British aerial reconnaissance discovered what seemed to be a rotating radar tower on a clifftop at Bruneval, near Le Havre. The truth must be revealed. The decision was taken to launch a daring raid on the Bruneval site to try and capture the technology for further examination.

Drawing upon evidence from archives across the world, Veiled Warriors offers a compelling account of nurses' wartime experiences and a clear appraisal of their work and its contribution to the allied cause between 1914 and 1918, on both the Western and the Eastern Fronts. Nurses believed they were involved in a multi-layered battle. Primarily, they were fighting for the lives of their patients on the "second battlefield" of casualty clearing stations, transports, and military hospitals.

George Rogers Clark (1752-1818) led four victorious campaigns against the Indians and British in the Ohio Valley during the American Revolution, but his most astonishing coup was recapturing Fort Sackville in 1779 when he was only 26. For 18 days, in the dead of winter, Clark and his troops marched through bone-chilling nights to reach the fort. With a deft mix of guile and violence, Clark led his men to triumph without losing a single soldier.

The Second World War was not only fought in the skies above Europe or on distant beaches – it came crashing into the lives of citizens across the UK night after night . . . for almost five years. Between 1939 and 1945, more than 60,000 civilians were killed and millions made homeless during...

In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. To understand the significance of the parts...

Surprisingly neglected in accounts of Allied wartime triumphs, in 1941 British and Commonwealth forces completed a stunning and important victory in East Africa against an overwhelmingly superior Italian opponent. A hastily formed British-led force, never larger than 70,000 strong, advanced along two fronts to defeat nearly 300,000 Italian and colonial troops.

The Pequot War (1636-1638) was a short-lived but extremely violent and bloody episode in United States history. This event represents one of the turning points in the entire history of North America, as the war changed the balance of power. The Dutch colonial authorities lost their status of being the dominant economic and political force, while the English took over this epithet. The end of the war also represented the first stage in England’s intensive expansion in that part of the world.

The Hanukkah story honors the heroes and heroines throughout Jewish history who have fought using both might and wisdom to overcome their foes. One of these heroes is Judah the Maccabee...

The Sukhoi Su-57 “Felon”. The Russian Federation’s formidable new stealth fighter. Sleek, dangerous, and—forward-deployed into the maelstrom of the Syrian Civil War for field testing—vulnerable. For the CIA, the Su-57’s presence in Syria presents an opportunity. For Mossad’s David Shafron, the former assassin once known as the “Lion of God”, it represents a threat. For the Syrian rebels soon tasked with its recovery...their own damnation. It’s a high-stakes gambit worthy of the Cold War, but this war is red-hot.

Sir Maurice Oldfield was one of the most important British spies of the Cold War era. A farmer's son from a provincial grammar school, Sir Maurice was the first Chief of MI6 who didn't come to the role via the traditional route. Oldfield was the voice of British Intelligence in Washington at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and was largely responsible for keeping the UK out of the Vietnam War. Working his way to the top, he took on the job of rebuilding confidence in the British Secret Service in the wake of the Cambridge spies scandal.

China loomed large on the world stage. Wealth, power, and hundreds of years of rule by the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty catapulted them to new heights, but with power and prestige came those who would do anything to usurp their authority and undermine their sense of stability. The British Empire and its faithful allies devised a masterful plan and executed it with stark precision. Vicious lies, cheating, and stealing were only the beginning of what they had in store for the nation.

Brothers in War is the immensely powerful story of eight Beechey brothers, and how they paid the ultimate price for King and country in the Great War. Some were keen to enlist from the start, others were conscripted and some dead against. Eventually, all eight would be swept up into its devastating path as, despite astonishing displays of courage and strength of character, they met their fates on the battlefields of France, Flanders, East Africa, and Gallipoli.

The unlikely man at the roiling center of this intrigue was Robert Bunch, an American-born Englishman who had maneuvered his way to the position of British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew to loathe slavery and the righteousness of its practitioners. Bunch used his unique perch and boundless ambition to become a key player, sending reams of dispatches to the home government and eventually becoming the Crown's best secret source on the Confederacy.

During the Second World War, people arrived in Britain from all over the world as troops, war-workers, nurses, refugees, exiles, and prisoners-of-war, chiefly from Europe, America, and the British Empire. Between 1939 and 1945, the population in Britain became more diverse than it had ever been before. Through diaries, letters, and interviews, Mixing It tells of ordinary lives pushed to extraordinary lengths.

This dramatic account of the War of 1812 fills a surprising gap in the popular literature of the nation's formative years. It is this war, followed closely on the War of Independence, that established the young nation as a permanent power and proved its claim to Manifest Destiny.

What was the bloodiest war in American history? Most people with at least a little knowledge of history would quickly say that it was the Civil War (1861-65), and they would certainly be correct overall. However, when historians go farther back in time and include colonial wars and look at casualties per capita, the correct answer would be the much-lesser known conflict known as "King Philip's War" (1675-76).

Knowing everything we do about siege warfare and the medieval way of conquering and being conquered, this book sheds more light on the series of wars that formed the initiative to become independent as a Scottish nation. There is much confusion about the Scottish wars of independence, and in this book, we will clarify some of that. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the Wars of Scottish Independence were a series of army fights performed between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England. These are significant events in Scottish history.

While the battle had a profound impact, it has also been romanticized and mythologized beyond even epic proportions. Though often forgotten today (more than 250 years after the battle), the Battle of the Plains of Abraham was the culmination of a long siege, and the decisive action itself was an incredibly short affair at less than half an hour. Despite that brevity, both commanding generals were mortally wounded in the exchange, making British General James Wolfe a national hero on both sides of the Atlantic and French General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm a convenient scapegoat.

No Better Friend tells the incredible true story of Frank Williams, a radarman in Britain's Royal Air Force, and Judy, a purebred pointer, who met as prisoners of war during World War II. Judy, who became the war's only official canine POW, was a fiercely loyal dog who sensed danger - warning her fellow prisoners of imminent attacks and protecting them from brutal beatings. Frank and Judy's friendship, an unbreakable bond forged in the worst circumstances, is one of the great recently unearthed stories of World War II.

The 19th century saw the rise of one of the largest, most powerful empires of the modern era. The sun never set on the British Empire, whose holdings spanned the globe, in one form or another, and trade flowed east and west. An integral but underutilized part of a vast trade network included China. The Opium Wars: The History and Legacy of the 19th Century Conflicts Between Britain and China examines the way in which trade, colonialism, and illegal drug use culminated with one of the 19th century’s most controversial fights.