British Military History

The story of the British Army has many sides to it, being a tale of heroic successes and tragic failures, of dogged determination and drunken disorder. It involves many of the most vital preoccupations in the history of the island - the struggle against continental domination by a single power, the battle for empire - and a cast of remarkable characters: Marlborough, Wellington and Montgomery among them.

An exciting and accurate portrayal of the military action in the southern colonies that led to a new American nation. A companion to Pancake's study of the northern campaign, 1777: The Year of the Hangman, this volume deals with the American Revolution in the Carolinas. Together, the two books constitute a complete history of the Revolutionary War.

The British Army in the World Wars comprehensively analyzes Britain’s experience in the field, the results, and the traumatic aftermath of World War I and World War II.

Simon Schama's sweeping history of Britain breathes life into our past centuries, vividly depicting exactly what life was like for our ancestors and how their experiences have shaped modern British culture and identity. An informative and entertaining mixture of anecdote and analysis, Schama's work offers a real insight into what it is to be British.

With all the immediacy of an eyewitness account, Anthony Pitch recounts the dramatic story of the British invasion of Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1814. The British torched the Capitol, the White House, and other buildings, setting off an inferno that illuminated the countryside for miles around and sent President James Madison galloping out of town. The author's gripping account also describes the valiant defense of nearby Fort McHenry and the story of the writing of The Star Spangled Banner.

Initially a slaving vessel itself, the Black Joke was captured in 1827 and repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots. Over the next five years, the vessel liberated more enslaved people than any other in Britain's West Africa Squadron. As Britain attempted to snuff out the transatlantic slave trade by way of treaty and negotiation, enforcing these policies fell to ships such as the Black Joke as they battled slavers, weather disasters, and interpersonal drama among captains and crew that reverberated across oceans.

From the author of Wartime and The Thirties comes an outstanding history of the most prolonged and devastating attack ever endured by Britain's civilian population – the Blitz. September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's sustained attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight months, the Blitz was a new and terrible form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, widely feared since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war.

Over the course of its history, England has engaged in an uncountable number of battles, but none of her military heroes has had a greater military legacy than Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté. Whether traveling to Trafalgar Square or one of the hundreds of pubs named after him, seemingly it becomes easy to believe that no Briton has cast as long a shadow.

In The Weight of Vengeance, Bickham provides a provocative new account of America's forgotten war, underscoring its significance for both sides by placing it in global context. This shifting balance of power provided the United States with the opportunity to challenge Britain's dominance of the Atlantic world. territorial expansion.

The British Army: The History and Legacy of the Army That Helped Establish the World’s Largest Empire examines the various battles and events that the army played such crucial roles in over the centuries. You will learn about the British Army like never before.

This groundbreaking study of agriculture's role in the war defies long-held notions that Northern industrialization and urbanization led to clashes between North and South. Huston argues that the ideological chasm between plantation owners in the South and family farmers in the North led to the political eruption of 1854-1856 and the birth of a sectionalized party system.

It is the winter of 2001. A terror ship is bound for Britain carrying a horrifying weapon. The British military sends a crack unit of SAS and SBS to assault the vessel before she reaches London. So begins a true story of explosive action as this band of elite warriors pursues the merchants of death from the high seas to the harsh wildlands of Afghanistan. The hunt culminates in the single greatest battle of the Afghan war, the brutal and bloody siege of an ancient mud-walled fortress crammed full of hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

Here at last is the true story of the merchant fleet during World War II, the non-fighting service in which 32,000 men died yet whose essential role has never been fully appreciated. The author, himself a member of the service from 1941-47, relates the stories of merchantmen and their crews with unique insight. From the early days of the war to the day of victory on the Rhine, through combined operations in the Mediterranean and at Normandy, the complete operation of the fleet is examined, with vivid accounts of the horrific losses undergone, the heroism of the crews and the sacrifices ...

Continuing his exploration of the alternative paths that British history might so easily have taken, Timothy Venning turns his attention to the Hundred Years War between England and France. Could the English have won in the long term, or, conversely, have been decisively defeated sooner?

War. Famine. Conquest. Death. Explore the rise and fall of history’s greatest empires. History Of Empires: Rise and Fall of the Greatest Empires in History! Understanding the Roman Empire, American Empire, British Empire, & Much More is a thrilling study of empires whose leaders lost sight of their civic obligations, leading to revolts, social disruption, and inescapable destruction.

Using audio interviews from the archives of the Imperial War Museums and National World War II Museum, this immersive oral history describes what it was actually like to take part in the landings on 6 June 1944 and the weeks of ferocious fighting in Normandy that followed. British, American, Canadian and German veterans, as well as French civilians, speak of experiences they could never forget.

As the horror of Nazism tightened its grip on Germany, Jews found themselves trapped and desperate. For many, their only hope of salvation came in the form of a small, bespectacled British man: Frank Foley. Working as a Berlin Passport Control Officer, Foley helped thousands of Jews to flee the country with visas and false passports, personally entering the camps to get Jews out, and sheltering those on the run from the Gestapo in his own apartment. Described by a Jewish leader as "the Pimpernel of the Jews," Foley was an unsung hero of the Holocaust.

In February 1793, in the wake of the War of American Independence and one year after British prime minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands. France thus initiated nearly a quarter century of armed conflict with Britain. During this fraught and still-contested period, historian Nathaniel Jarrett suggests, Pitt and his ministers forged a diplomatic policy and military strategy that envisioned an international system anticipating the Vienna settlement of 1815.

The amazing experiences of the Queen Alexandra nurses in the World Wars is one of the greatest adventure stories of modern times, and - incredibly - remains largely untold. Thousands of middle-class girls, barely out of school, were plucked from sheltered backgrounds, subjected to training regimes unimaginably tough by today's standards, and sent forth to share the harsh conditions of the fighting services.

From 1931 to 1953, there was a race like no other. It was a race to the top of the world - a race primarily between Great Britain, Nazi Germany and the United States. Carried on across nearly the entire sweep of the Himalayas, it involved not only the greatest mountain climbers of the era, but statesmen and millionaires, world-class athletes and bona fide eccentrics, scientists and generals, obscure villagers and national heroes.