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The War in Burma 1943-1944: (WW2 #10) (The Ladybird Expert Series #16)
By James Holland. 2023
BOOK 10 OF THE LADYBIRD EXPERT HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, FROM AWARD-WINNING HISTORIAN JAMES HOLLANDFeaturing stunning illustrations from…
Keith Burns, bringing the story to life in vivid detailWhy were British troops in Burma?What was The Defence of the Admin Box?How did the British defeat the Japanese troops?THE BURMA CAMPAIGN was one of the most prolonged campaigns in the South-East Asian theatre of war, but it was also one of the most dramatic.Against Japanese troops, and monsoon weather, the Allies finally prevailed, demonstrating to the world that the Axis powers could be defeated in the East.BRITAIN'S TURNING POINT IN THE WAR IN THE EASTWritten by historian, author and broadcaster James Holland, The War in Burma is an essential, accessible introduction to Britain's triumph in the East.__________Discover the full Ladybird Expert WW2 series:BlitzkriegThe Battle of BritainBattle of the AtlanticThe Desert WarThe Eastern FrontThe Pacific WarThe Bomber WarThe War in ItalyThe Battle for NormandyThe War in BurmaVictory in EuropeVictory Against JapanA War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture
By Samuel Hynes. 1990
Between the opulent Edwardian years and the 1920s the First World War opens like a gap in time. England after…
the war was a different place; the arts were different; history was different; sex, society, class were all different.Samuel Hynes examines the process of that transformation. He explores a vast cultural mosaic comprising novels and poetry, music and theatre, journalism, paintings, films, parliamentary debates, public monuments, sartorial fashions, personal diaries and letters.Told in rich detail, this penetrating account shatters much of the received wisdom about the First World War. It shows how English culture adapted itself to the needs of killing, how our stereotypes of the war gradually took shape and how the nations thought and imagination were profoundly and irretrievably changed.Walker's Exercises for Ladies
By Donald Walker. 2018
For ladies leading sedentary lives, Donald Walker has just the pep talk you need.If you haven't yet discovered the vast…
array of benefits that arise from physical exertion, then let Walker be your guide. As well as helping to prolong life and improve its happiness, active exercises can help you to achieve a beauty of form, elegant air and graceful manners.Through a combination of ladylike exercises such as dancing and dumb-bells, you can become the envy of all ladies.Tips include:- The posture and deportment that will enhance beauty- The correct manner of curtsy and what to do with one's hands when in company- Dangerous activities to avoid, from badminton to billiardsLavishly illustrated throughout, this guide has been brought back to life so that modern ladies can exercise the Victorian way.Unwinnable: Britain’s War in Afghanistan
By Theo Farrell. 2021
Afghanistan was an unwinnable war. As British and American troops withdraw, discover this definitive account that explains why. It could…
have been a very different story. British forces could have successfully withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2002, having done the job they set out to do: to defeat al-Qaeda. Instead, in the years that followed, Britain paid a devastating price for their presence in Helmand province. So why did Britain enter, and remain, in an ill-fated war? Why did it fail so dramatically, and was this expedition doomed from the beginning? Drawing on unprecedented access to military reports, government documents and senior individuals, Professor Theo Farrell provides an extraordinary work of scholarship. He explains the origins of the war, details the campaigns over the subsequent years, and examines the West's failure to understand the dynamics of local conflict and learn the lessons of history that ultimately led to devastating costs and repercussions still relevant today.'The best book so far on Britain's...war in Afghanistan' International Affairs 'Masterful, irrefutable... Farrell records all these military encounters with the irresistible pace of a novelist' Sunday TimesUnder Two Dictators: With an introduction by Nikolaus Wachsmann
By Margarete Buber-Neumann. 2008
This book is a unique account by a survivor of both the Soviet and Nazi concentration camps: its author, Margarete…
Buber-Neumann, was a loyal member of the German Communist party. From 1935 she and her second husband, Heinz Neumann, were political refugees in Moscow. In April 1937 Neumann was arrested by the secret police, and executed by the end of the year. She herself was arrested in 1938. In Under Two Dictators Buber-Neumann describes the two years of suffering she endured in the Soviet prisons and in the huge Central-Asian concentration and slave labour camp of Karaganda; her extradition to the Gestapo in 1940 at the time of the Stalin-Hitler Friendship Pact; and her five years of suffering in the Nazi concentration and death camp for women, Ravensbrück. Her story displays extraordinary powers of observation and of memory as she describes her own fate, as well as those of hundreds of fellow prisoners. She explores the behaviour of the guards, supervisors, police and secret police and compares and contrasts Stalin and Hitler's methods of dictatorship and terror. First published in Swedish, German and English and subsequently translated and published in a further nine languages, Under Two Dictators is harrowing in its depiction of life under the rule of two of the most brutal regimes the western world has ever seen but also an inspiring story of survival, of ideology and of strength and a clarion call for the protection of democracy.Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches From Kiev
By Andrey Kurkov. 2014
Acclaimed author Andrey Kurkov gives powerful insight into life in Kyiv following the 2013 protests and before the 2022 Russian…
invasion.-16°C, sunlight, silence. I drove the children to school, then went to see the revolution. I walked between the tents. Talked with revolutionaries. They were weary today. The air was thick with the smell of old campfires. Ukraine Diaries is acclaimed writer Andrey Kurkov's first-hand account of the ongoing crisis in his country. From his flat in Kyiv, just five hundred yards from Independence Square, Kurkov can smell the burning barricades and hear the sounds of grenades and gunshot. Kurkov's diaries begin on the first day of the pro-European protests in November 2013, and describe the violent clashes in the Maidan, the impeachment of Yanukovych, Russia's annexation of Crimea and the separatist uprisings in the east of Ukraine. Going beyond the headlines, they give vivid insight into what it's like to live through - and try to make sense of - times of intense political unrest, on the path to the current crisis.Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War
By Mark Andryczyk. 2023
'The extraordinary writers in this volume articulate the taste, the terror, and the dialect of war; they command their powers…
of description to face a shameless empire intent on annihilating them' Ellena SavageA selection of Ukraine's leading writers convey the reality of life within Ukraine during the first year of the invasionOn 24 February 2022, the lives of Ukrainians were devastatingly altered. Since that day, many of Ukraine's writers have attempted to fathom what is happening to them and to their country. This anthology brings together writing from inside Ukraine, by Ukrainians, available in English for the first time. Here they document everyday life, ponder the role of culture amid conflict, denounce Russian imperialism and revisit their relations with the world, especially Europe and its ideals, as they try to comprehend the horrors of war.From tearing-downs of Russia's use of culture as justification of the war to moving descriptions of nights spent sheltering in corridors, poignant snatched moments with a husband on his single night away from the army, to descriptions of the eerie weather in the months leading up to the invasion, as if nature was trying to warn Ukraine, these essays reveal the texture, rawness and reality of life in Ukraine under war as never before.Two Lives of Charlemagne: The Biography, History And Legend Of King Charlemagne, Ruler Of The Frankish Empire (hardcover)
By Einhard, Notker The Stammerer. 2008
Einhard's Life of Charlemagne is an absorbing chronicle of one of the most powerful and dynamic of all medieval rulers,…
written by a close friend and adviser. In elegant prose it describes Charlemagne's personal life, details his achievements in reviving learning and the arts, recounts his military successes and depicts one of the defining moments in European history: Charlemagne's coronation as emperor in Rome on Christmas Day 800AD. By contrast, Notker's account, written some decades after Charlemagne's death, is a collection of anecdotes rather than a presentation of historical facts.Tudor Monastery Farm: Life in rural England 500 years ago
By Peter Ginn, Ruth Goodman. 2013
Ruth Goodman and Peter Ginn have become familiar faces on BBC2 after their hugely popular and immersive time-travelling experiments, Victorian,…
Edwardian and Wartime Farm. But for their fourth series, and our accompanying book, they have joined forces with Tom Pinfold to take on their biggest challenge yet: going back to Tudor England to endure the harsh realities of working for an Abbey Farm.Peter, Ruth and Tom are trained historians, driven by new research and discovery. They are passionate about bringing period details to life, and they do that for us by comprehensively inhabiting the era for months, using only materials, tools and technology available at the time, to earn their living, celebrate their holidays, clothe and feed themselves and their families. Follow them as they discover how to build a pigsty, brew their own ale, forge their own machinery and keep a Tudor household. Scrupulously researched, totally authentic and with its own contemporary narrative playing out within an accurate reconstruction of Tudor England, this is a fantastic glimpse into history, as it was lived. This is set to be Peter, Ruth and Tom’s most ambitious historical assignment yet.The Town Below the Ground: Edinburgh's Legendary Undgerground City
By Jan-Andrew Henderson. 1999
Below Scotland's capital, hidden for almost two centuries, is a metropolis whose very existence was all but forgotten. For almost…
250 years, Edinburgh was surrounded by a giant defensive wall. Unable to expand the city's boundaries, the burgeoning population built over every inch of square space. And when there was no more room, they began to dig down . . . Trapped in lives of poverty and crime, these subterranean dwellers existed in darkness and misery, ignored by the chroniclers of their time. It is only in the last few years that the shocking truth has begun to emerge about the sinister underground city.The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain
By Paul Preston. 2012
Long neglected by European historians, the unspeakable atrocities of Franco's Spain are finally brought to tragic light in this definitive…
work. Evoking such classics as Anne Applebaum's Gulag and Robert Conquest's The Great Terror, The Spanish Holocaust sheds light on one of the darkest and most unexamined eras of modern European history. As Spain finally reclaims its historical memory, a full picture can now be drawn of the atrocities of Franco's Spain--from torture and judicial murders to the abuse of women and children. Paul Preston provides an unforgettable account of the systematic terror carried out by Spain's fascist government.The astonishing but true story of one of the most notorious spy cases from the Cold War—and the international manhunt…
that seized global attention as it revealed the shadowy world of deep cover KGB operatives. The dramatic arrest in London on January 7, 1961 of five Soviet spies made headlines worldwide and had repercussions around the globe. Alerted by the CIA, Britain's security service, MI5, had discovered two British spies stealing invaluable secrets from the highly sensitive submarine research center at Portland, UK. Their controller, Gordon Lonsdale, was a Canadian who frequently visited a middle-aged couple, the Krogers, in their sleepy London suburb. But the seemingly unassuming Krogers were revealed to be deep cover American KGB spies—infamous undercover agents the FBI had been hunting for years—and they were just one part of an extensive network of Soviet operatives in the UK.In the wake of the spies' sensational trial, the FBI uncovered the true identity of the enigmatic Lonsdale—Konon Molody, a Russian who had lived in California before being recruited by the KGB. Molody opened secret talks with MI5 to betray Russia, but before he had the chance, the KGB blackmailed Britain into spy swaps for him and the Krogers.Based on revelatory, newly-released archival material and inside sources from around the world, Dead Doubles follows the hunt for the highly damaging Portland Spy Ring. As gripping as a le Carré novel, this incredible narrative, layered with false identities, deceptions, and betrayal, crisscrosses from the UK to the USSR to the US, Canada, Europe and New Zealand, and brings to life one of the most extraordinary spy stories of the Cold War.Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat. 2001
In contrast to the widely held view that Italian fascism did not have a coherent program, Ben-Ghiat argues that the…
political situation was used as "an opportunity to create a peculiarly Italian and fascist mass culture celebrating order, hierarchy, and national uniqueness."In the tradition of Agent Zigzag comes this breathtaking biography, as fast-paced and emotionally intuitive as the very best spy…
thrillers, which illuminates an unsung hero of the French Resistance during World War II—Robert de La Rochefoucald, an aristocrat turned anti-Nazi saboteur—and his daring exploits as a résistant trained by Britain’s Special Operations Executive.A scion of one of the most storied families in France, Robert de La Rochefoucald was raised in magnificent chateaux and educated in Europe's finest schools. When the Nazis invaded and imprisoned his father, La Rochefoucald escaped to England and learned the dark arts of anarchy and combat—cracking safes and planting bombs and killing with his bare hands—from the officers of Special Operations Executive, the collection of British spies, beloved by Winston Churchill, who altered the war in Europe with tactics that earned it notoriety as the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” With his newfound skills, La Rochefoucauld returned to France and organized Resistance cells, blew up fortified compounds and munitions factories, interfered with Germans’ war-time missions, and executed Nazi officers. Caught by the Germans, La Rochefoucald withstood months of torture without cracking, and escaped his own death, not once but twice.The Saboteur recounts La Rochefoucauld’s enthralling adventures, from jumping from a moving truck on his way to his execution to stealing Nazi limos to dressing up in a nun’s habit—one of his many disguises and impersonations. Whatever the mission, whatever the dire circumstance, La Rochefoucauld acquitted himself nobly, with the straight-back aplomb of a man of aristocratic breeding: James Bond before Ian Fleming conjured him.More than just a fast-paced, true thriller, The Saboteur is also a deep dive into an endlessly fascinating historical moment, telling the untold story of a network of commandos that battled evil, bravely worked to change the course of history, and inspired the creation of America’s own Central Intelligence Agency.She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth
By Helen Castor. 2011
“Helen Castor has an exhilarating narrative gift. . . . Readers will love this book, finding it wholly absorbing and rewarding.” —Hilary Mantel, Booker…
Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall In the tradition of Antonia Fraser, David Starkey, and Alison Weir, prize-winning historian Helen Castor delivers a compelling, eye-opening examination of women and power in England, witnessed through the lives of six women who exercised power against all odds—and one who never got the chance. With the death of Edward VI in 1553, England, for the first time, would have a reigning queen. The question was: Who?Four women stood upon the crest of history: Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary; Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Lady Jane Grey. But over the centuries, other exceptional women had struggled to push the boundaries of their authority and influence—and been vilified as “she-wolves” for their ambitions. Revealed in vivid detail, the stories of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou, and the Empress Matilda expose the paradox that England’s next female leaders would confront as the Tudor throne lay before them—man ruled woman, but these women sought to rule a nation.Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
By Menachem Kaiser. 2021
A New York Times Critics&’ Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for BiographyFrom a gifted young writer,…
the story of his quest to reclaim his family&’s apartment building in Poland—and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser&’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather&’s former battle to reclaim the family&’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as &“The Killer.&” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather&’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise To Power
By Timothy W. Ryback. 2024
From the internationally acclaimed author of Hitler's Private Library, a dramatic recounting of the six critical months before Adolf Hitler…
assumed power, when the Nazi leader teetered between triumph and ruin.In the summer of 1932, the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse. One in three Germans was unemployed. Violence was rampant. Hitler's National Socialists surged at the polls. Paul von Hindenburg, an aging war hero and avowed monarchist, was a reluctant president bound by oath to uphold the constitution. The November elections offered Hitler the prospect of a Reichstag majority and a path to political power. But instead, the Nazis lost two million votes. As membership hemorrhaged and financial backers withdrew, the Nazi Party threatened to fracture. Hitler talked of suicide. The New York Times declared he was finished. Yet somehow, in a few brief weeks, he was chancellor of Germany.In fascinating detail and with previously un-accessed archival materials, Timothy W. Ryback tells the remarkable story of Hitler's dismantling of democracy through the democratic process. He provides a fresh perspective and insights into Hitler's personal and professional lives in these months, in all their complexity and uncertainty-backroom deals, unlikely alliances, stunning betrayals, an ill-timed tax audit, and a fateful weekend that changed our world forever. Above all, Ryback makes clear why a wearied Hindenburg, who disdained the "Bohemian corporal," ultimately decided to appoint Hitler chancellor in January 1933.Within weeks, Germany was no longer a democracy.What Everyone Knows About Britain* (*Except The British)
By Michael Peel. 2024
How do you see Britain?That might depend on your point of view, and as long time British foreign correspondent, Michael…
Peel has come to understand, it can look very different from outside.It's tempting to think of the UK as a fundamentally stable and successful nation. But events of the past few years, from Brexit to exposés of imperial history, have begun to spark fierce public debates about whether that is true. Is Britain, just a marginal northern European island nation, marked by injustices, corruption and with a bloody history of slavery, repression and looting?And yet UK politics, media, and public opinion live constantly in the shadow of old myths, Second World War era nostalgia, and a belief in supposedly core British values of tolerance, decency and fair play. British politicians regularly exploit a damaging complacency that holds that everything will turn out okay, because, in Britain, it always does.In WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT BRITAIN, Michael Peel digs into the national consciousness with the perspective of distance to pull apart the ways in which we British have become unmoored from crucial truths about ourselves. He shows us that from many perspectives we are no different from other countries whose own national delusions have seen them succumb to abuses of power, increased poverty and divisive conflict.The battle over Britain's narrative is the struggle for its future and its place in the world. So, how do we escape the trick mirror - and see ourselves as we really are?What Everyone Knows About Britain* (*Except The British)
By Michael Peel. 2024
'A rare writer with the courage to tell Britain some home truths about itself and where it's headed. A much…
needed book'. - Ian Dunt'What Britain needs at the moment is not to be talked up or talked down, but simply a sense of itself that's underpinned by clarity and honesty... This is exactly what Michael Peel provides in this persuasive, good-humoured book.' - Jonathan Coe'A wake-up call for those still under the illusion that Great Britain plc punches above its weight'. - Chris Mullin, author of A Very British Coup'Entertaining and smart.' - Geoff Norcott'Michael Peel is a top class thinker and writer. This is a necessary book as well as an extremely entertaining one.' - Simon Kuper'Sharp, witty and eye-opening. As Peel convincingly argues, we can do so much better.' - Matthew Parker, author of One Fine Day: Britain's Empire On the BrinkHow do you see Britain? That might depend on your point of view, and as long time British foreign correspondent, Michael Peel has come to understand, it can look very different from outside.It's tempting to think of the UK as a fundamentally stable and successful nation. But events of the past few years, from Brexit to exposés of imperial history, have begun to spark fierce public debates about whether that is true. Is Britain, just a marginal northern European island nation, marked by injustices, corruption and with a bloody history of slavery, repression and looting? And yet UK politics, media, and public opinion live constantly in the shadow of old myths, Second World War era nostalgia, and a belief in supposedly core British values of tolerance, decency and fair play. British politicians regularly exploit a damaging complacency that holds that everything will turn out okay, because, in Britain, it always does.In WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT BRITAIN, Michael Peel digs into the national consciousness with the perspective of distance to pull apart the ways in which we British have become unmoored from crucial truths about ourselves. He shows us that from many perspectives we are no different from other countries whose own national delusions have seen them succumb to abuses of power, increased poverty and divisive conflict.The battle over Britain's narrative is the struggle for its future and its place in the world. So, how do we escape the trick mirror - and see ourselves as we really are?The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens
By Nicola Clark. 2023
'Written in a lively, accessible style, The Waiting Game is full of insight' Suzannah Lipscomb, Literary ReviewEvery Tudor Queen had…
ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power. A quiet word behind the scenes, an appropriately timed gift, a well-negotiated marriage alliance were all forms of political agency wielded expertly by women. The Waiting Game explores the daily lives of ladies-in-waiting, revealing the secrets of recruitment, costume, what they ate, where (and with whom) they slept. We meet María de Salinas, who travelled to England with Catherine of Aragon when just a teenager and spied for her during the divorce from Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn's lady-in-waiting Jane Parker was instrumental in the execution of not one, but two queens. And maid-of-honour Anne Basset kept her place through the last four consorts, negotiating the conflicting loyalties of her birth family, her mistress the Queen, and even the desires of the King himself. As Henry changed wives, and changed the very fabric of the country's structure besides, these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn't exist before. The Waiting Game is the first time their vital story has been told.