Military History

THE story of Bletchley Park's codebreaking operations in the Second World War is now well known, but its counterparts in the First World War - Room 40 & MI1(b) - remain in the shadows, despite their involvement in and influence on most of the major events of that war.

Russia is destroying Ukraine. China threatens Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Endless war in the Middle East sends waves of migrants and terrorists washing around the world.

In April 1944 nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became the first Jews ever known to break out of Auschwitz. Under electrified fences and past armed watchtowers, evading thousands of SS men and slavering dogs, they trekked across marshlands, mountains and rivers to freedom. Vrba's mission: to reveal to the world the truth of the Holocaust.

Aristocrat, gambler, innovator and special forces legend, the life of David Stirling should need no retelling. His formation of the Special Air Service in the summer of 1941 led to a new form of warfare and Stirling is remembered as the father of special forces soldiering.

Between 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse of the Tsarist empire.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat comes the gripping untold story of one of the most heroic units that fought in World War II. On December 7th 1941, the Japanese Navy bombed Pearl Harbor.

In August 1942, beleaguered Malta was within weeks of surrender to the Axis, because its 300,000 people could no longer be fed. 

The Flying Sikh tells the unique story of the only Sikh airman to fly with the RFC and the RAF during the First World War. It is the remarkable account of one man's struggle to enlist, against discrimination, and then his service as a fighter pilot over the battlefields of Flanders. 

The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam Houston, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis fought to free Texas from repressive Mexican rule. In Unsettled Land, historian Sam Haynes reveals the reality beneath this powerful creation myth.

A comprehensive, accurate, and academically-supported reference of all of the major military and paramilitary camouflage patterns that have been in use around the world from the end of World War Two to today.