Here we offer a selection of our favourite books on military history. Some are the books we have used as sources for this site, some are good introductions to their subjects and others are interesting oddities.
We also have a selection of over one hundred longer book reviews.
All links on this site go straight to the relevant Amazon web site (currently we link to the UK, US and Canadian sites), where you can place orders for any of the books listed here.
Recent Reviews
Click for full list of recent reviews
Searching for the Queen's Cowboys, Tony Maxwell. A book with three main strands: a travelogue that follows the author around South Africa as he filmed a documentary about the Strathcona Horse; reflections on his childhood in apartheid South Africa and on the history of the country; and an account of the role of the Strathcona Horse, a Canadian cavalry unit, in the fighting during the Boer War [read full review]
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Alone I Fly - A Wellington Pilot's Desert War, Bill Bailey. Wider ranging than the title would suggest, Bailey served as a Wellington pilot in North Africa and from Malta, an airfield controller on Malta and as an instructor in the UK, all after surviving a fairly disastrous first mission in the desert. An engaging and wide ranging autobiography that gives an unusual view of the RAF at war. [read full review]
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The Real Tenko, Mark Felton. A grim account of the ordeals suffered by female prisoners of the Japanese during the Second World War, starting with a series of atrocities that took place during the initial conquests, and continuing throughout the war in the huge network on internment camps established across the new Japanese empire. [read full review]
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Ancient Warfare Volume III Issue 6 .
Carnyx, cornu and signa: Battlefield communications. With its main focus on military signals and standards this issue of Ancient Warfare magazine looks at the evolution of the battle standard from Persian to Roman times, and the various methods used to issue commands across the ancient battlefield, including musical instruments. Also includes a look at late Roman battle tactics, and the battle of Cunaxa. [see more] |
Fleet Air Arm Carrier Warfare, Kev Darling. A complete history of the Fleet Air Arm's use of aircraft carriers, from the earliest experiments during the First World War, through the Second World War, where the carriers became the most important capital ships in the navy, the Korean War, which saw the Fleet Air Arm involved from the beginning to the end, the Falklands War, which re-emphasised the important of the carrier and right up to the current 'super-carriers'. [read full review]
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 Roman Conquests: Macedonia and Greece, Philip Matyszak. A lucid account of the eighty years that saw the Romans go from virtually unknown outsiders in Greece to become the dominate power in the peninsula having beaten the Macedonians in a series of devastating victories that helped established the superiority of the Legions over the Phalanx [read full review]
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US Destroyers 1934-45 Pre-war classes, Dave McComb. A look at the design, construction and service record of the ten classes of destroyers built for the US Navy between the resumption of destroyer construction in the early 1930s and the American entry into the Second World War, from the Farragut class of 1934 to the massive Gleaves class, of which sixty-six were funded between 1938 and 1942. [read full review]
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In All Things First - No.1 Squadron at War 1939-1945, Peter Caygill. A very details day-by-day history of the RAF's premier single engined fighter squadron during the Second World War, a period that saw them take part in just about every aspect of the air war, from the Battle of Britain to providing daylight bomber escorts over Germany. [read full review]
Arctic Convoy PQ8: The Story of Capt Robert Brundle and the SS Harmatris, Michael Wadsworth. Combines an autobiography of the author's grandfather with the story of Arctic Convoys PQ8 and QP14 to produce a very human view of the arctic convoys and the struggles and suffering of the crews that helped get essential supplies to the Soviet Union. [read full review]
Gunther Plüschow: Airman, Escaper, Explorer, Anton Rippon. The biography of a remarkable figure - a German airman who fought at Tsingtao in China, before become the only German POW to escape from Britain during either World War and returning to a hero's welcome in Germany. [read full review]
Tudor Sea Power - The Foundation of Greatness, David Childs. A wide ranging study of the Tudor navy from its rise under Henry VIII to the more famous clash with Spain under Elizabeth I, looking at every aspect of the fleet from the smallest details of equipment up to the great clashes with the French and Spanish. [read full review]
Mons, Anzac and Kut, by an MP, Lieutenant Colonel the Hon. Aubrey Herbert MP, ed. Edward Melotte. Three very different diaries from the same author that show how attitudes to the war changed in the first two years of the First World War as the promise of a short exciting war faded away. They also provide some valuable insights into the events they portray, illuminating the chaos of the early fighting in France and the hopelessness of the Allied position at Gallipoli. [read full review]
