England Wars

"Au bord du gouffre du 20e siècle, quatre icônes mondiales ont incarné de manière exemplaire et jusqu'à aujourd'hui ce que cela signifie de mener une vie véritablement libre". Les années 1933 à 1943 marquent le chapitre le plus noir de la modernité européenne. Face à la catastrophe, quatre femmes philosophes, à l'orée de leur 30 ans, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Ayn Rand et Hannah Arendt, développent leurs idées visionnaires : sur la relation entre l'individu et la société, l'homme et la femme, le sexe et le genre, la liberté et le totalitarisme, Dieu et l'homme.

In this imagined war, coalition forces led by Russia and France invade Britain and make several early advances, but the Germans land in Britain as allies and help to repulse the invasion. The brave English patriots, together with German soldiers, try to turn the tide. Written 20 years before the start of World War I in 1914, Le Queux’s novel is considered to have influenced many subsequent works, including H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.

At age 24 Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal, he had to do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British army officer in colonial wars in India and Sudan and as a journalist covering a Cuban uprising against the Spanish, glory and fame had eluded him.

After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force was miraculously evacuated from Dunkirk. Britain now stood alone to face Hitler’s inevitable invasion attempt. For the German army to land across the channel, Hitler needed mastery of the skies - the Royal Air Force would have to be broken. So every day throughout the summer, German bombers pounded the RAF air bases in the southern counties.

The summer of 1940 and the Battle of Britain - the darkest days of World War II. France, Poland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Norway had all been crushed by the powerful Nazi German war machine. Great Britain stood alone, fighting for its life. Award-winning 303 Squadron is the thrilling story of the celebrated squadron of Polish fighter pilots whose superb skill in the air helped save England during its most desperate hours.

In The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr paints a fascinating portrait of life in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century as the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire. Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, the nation was shaken by war and peace. The two wars were the worst we had ever known and the episodes of peace among the most turbulent and surprising.

In 1943 Winston Churchill and the British Empire needed millions of Indian troops, all of India's industrial output, and tons of Indian grain to support the Allied war effort. Such massive contributions were certain to trigger famine in India. Because Churchill believed that the fate of the British Empire hung in the balance, he proceeded, sacrificing millions of Indian lives in order to preserve what he held most dear. The result: the Bengal Famine of 1943-44, in which millions of villagers starved to death.

The year is 1861. The American Civil War has just begun, and London arms dealer Daniel Alberton is becoming a very wealthy man. His quiet dinner party seems remote indeed from the passions rending America. Yet investigator William Monk and his bride, Hester, sense growing tensions and barely concealed violence.

Even before the first rumblings of secession shook the halls of Congress, British involvement in the coming schism was inevitable. Britain was dependent on the South for cotton, and in turn the Confederacy relied almost exclusively on Britain for guns, bullets, and ships. The Union sought to block any diplomacy between the two and consistently teetered on the brink of war with Britain. For four years the complex web of relationships between the countries led to defeats and victories both minute and history-making.

Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of the Operation Columba and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. A tale of wartime espionage, bitter rivalries, extraordinary courage, astonishing betrayal, harrowing tragedy, and a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special mission, Operation Columba opens a fascinating new chapter in the annals of World War II. It is ultimately, the story of how, in one of the darkest and most dangerous times in history, under threat of death, people bravely chose to resist.

In The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr paints a fascinating portrait of life in Britain during the first half of the 20th century as the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire. Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, the nation was shaken by war and peace. The two wars were the worst we had ever known and the episodes of peace among the most turbulent and surprising.

Thorgrim Night Wolf, now somewhere on the south coast of Engla-land, may be closer to his goal of returning home than he has been since reaching Ireland years before, but he is still very, very far away. His son Harald, however, has ambitions beyond just getting home. Given command of one of the ships in the fleet, Harald sees a chance to put his courage on display, unleashing consequences that will lead Thorgrim into a fight against the powerful armies of Wessex, a fight he does not want.

Merton Naydler joined the RAF at the age of 19 and served for the next six years until May 1946. He flew Spitfires and Hurricanes during a tour of duty that took him to North Africa, Burma, and Malaya. This extremely entertaining memoir portrays wartime life in the desert environment where sand and flies and life under canvas made living and flying a daunting experience. This is the story of a sergeant pilot who learned his trade the hard way, in action over Africa and then honed his combat skills in the skies over Japanese-held tropical forests where he was eventually commissioned.

The first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722) was a soldier of such genius that a lavish palace, Blenheim, was built to honor his triumphs. Succeeding generations of Churchills sometimes achieved distinction but also included profligates and womanizers, and were saddled with the ruinous upkeep of Blenheim. The Churchills were an extraordinary family: ambitious, impecunious, impulsive, brave, and arrogant. Winston - recently voted "The Greatest Briton" - dominates them all. His failures and triumphs are revealed in the context of a poignant and sometimes tragic private life.

History is swamped by patriotic myths about the aerial combat fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe over the summer of 1940. In his gripping history of the Battle of Britain, Len Deighton drew on a decade of research and his own wartime experiences to puncture these myths and point towards a more objective, and even more inspiring, truth.

It’s the Second World War and the Savoy, the Dorchester, and Claridge’s teem with those determined not to allow Hitler to impact on their way of life. Spies: Meet Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster, the woman from M15 who has the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas. Royals: Meet Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia, born in a suite at Claridge’s that was declared Yugoslav territory for the night. Players: Meet Joyce Stone, whose husband leads the band at the Dorchester. West End Front is a witty and eye-opening account of the extraordinary events that unfolded under the reinforced ceilings of London’s grand hotels.

Convinced in 1838 that Britain's invaluable empire in India was threatened by Russia, Persia, and Afghan tribes, the British government ordered its Army of the Indus into Afghanistan to oust from power the independent-minded king, Dost Mohammed, and install in Kabul the unpopular puppet ruler Shah Shuja. Expecting a quick campaign, the British found themselves trapped by unforeseen circumstances; eventually the tribes united and the seemingly omnipotent army was slaughtered in 1842 as it desperately retreated through the mountain passes from Kabul to Jalalabad.

Edward Pellew, captain of the legendary Indefatigable, was quite simply the greatest British frigate captain in the age of sail. Left fatherless at age eight, with a penniless mother and five siblings, Pellew fought his way from the very bottom of the navy to fleet command. Victories and eye-catching feats won him a public following. Yet he had a gift for antagonizing his better-born peers, and he made powerful enemies. Redemption came with his last command, when he set off to do battle with the Barbary States and free thousands of European slaves.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war.

The fighting in North Africa during World War II is commonly overlooked, aside from the famous battle at El Alamein that pitted the British under General Bernard Montgomery against the legendary "Desert Fox", Erwin Rommel. But while the Second Battle of El Alamein would be the pivotal action in North Africa, the conflict in North Africa began all the way back in the summer of 1940, when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared Italy’s entrance into the war, seeing an opportunity for Italy to enlarge its colonial holdings in Africa by seizing portions of the British Empire.