Search results for ""pen sword books""
Pen & Sword Books Secret Operations Over Occupied Europe
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books The Murders of Annie Hearn
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Solo Wargaming
£20.00
Pen & Sword Books The French at Waterloo Eyewitness Accounts
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books The Rafs Youngest Bomber Pilot of Ww2
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books DD Sherman Tank Warriors
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books The London Mini and MIDI Bus Types
£31.50
Pen & Sword Books Churchill Cold War Warrior
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Yearbook of Astronomy 2025
£19.99
Pen & Sword Books Allied Railways of the Western Front Narrow Gauge in the Ypres Sector
£31.50
Pen & Sword Books The Life of Ltc Rolt
£19.80
Pen & Sword Books Tourism in Egypt Through the Ages
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Victorian and Edwardian Locomotive Portraits Northern England Wales Scotland and Ireland
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Hitler at Hintersee
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Pen & Sword Books The Breakthrough of Kampfgruppe Peiper in the Battle of the Bulge
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Pen & Sword Books Churchills Eagles
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Pen & Sword Books Peter Sutcliffe
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Pen & Sword Books Alum More Precious Than Gold
£19.80
Pen & Sword Books Like Wolves on the Fold
A detailed chronicle of a significant opening battle in the Anglo-Zulu War: 'The Zulu attack on Rorke's Drift thrillingly retold' (Richard Holmes). On January 22nd, 1879, the British Army in South Africa was swept aside by the seemingly unstoppable Zulu warriors at the Battle of Isandlwana. Nearby, at a remote outpost on the Buffalo River, a single company of the 24th Regiment and a few dozen recuperating hospital patients were passing a hot, monotonous day. By the time they received news from across the river, retreat was no longer an option. It seemed certain that the Rorkes Drift detachment would share the same fate. And yet, against incredible odds, the British managed to defend their station. In this riveting history, Colonel Snook brings the insights of a military professional to bear on this fateful encounter at the start of Anglo-Zulu War. It is an extraordinary talea victory largely achieved by the sheer bloody-mindedness of the British infantryman. Re
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Auschwitz Death Camp: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives
The concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the site of the single largest mass murder in history. Over one million mainly Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in its gas chambers. Countless more died as a result of disease and starvation. Auschwitz Death Camp is a chilling pictorial record of this infamous establishment. Using some 250 photographs together with detailed captions and accompanying text, it describes how Auschwitz evolved from a brutal labour camp at the beginning of the war into what was literally a factory of death.The images how people lived, worked and died at Auschwitz. The book covers the men who conceived and constructed this killing machine, and how the camp provided a vast labour pool for various industrial complexes erected in the vicinity.Auschwitz Death Camp is shocking proof of the magnitude of horror inflicted by the Nazis on innocent men, women and children. Such evil should not be forgotten lest it re-appear.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Walking Arras
Walking Arras marks the final volume in a trilogy of walking books about the British sector of the Western Front. Paul Reed once more takes us over paths trodden by men who were asked to make a huge ' and, for all too many, the ultimate ' sacrifice. The Battle of Arras falls between the Somme and Third Ypres; it marked the first British attempt to storm the Hindenburg Line defences, and the first use of lessons learned from the events of 1916. But it remains a forgotten part of the Western Front. It also remains one of the great killing battles of the Great War, with such a high fatal casualty rate that a soldier's chances of surviving Arras were much slimmer than even the Somme or Passchendaele. Most soldiers who served in the Great War served at Arras at some point; it was a name very much in the consciousness of the survivors of the Great War. Ninety years later, while there has been development at Arras, it is still an impressive battlefield and one worthy of the attention of any Great War enthusiast. This book will give a lead in seeing the ground connected with the fighting in 1917. Making a slight departure from the style of the previous two walking books, the chapters look at the historical background of an area and then separately describe a walk; with supplementary notes about the associated cemeteries in that region.
£12.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Evacuees: Children's Lives on the WW2 Homefront
On the outbreak of the Second World War, during the first week of September 1939 over three million people were evacuated. Operation Pied Piper was the largest ever transportation of people across Britain, and most of those moved to safety in the countryside were schoolchildren. Social historian Gillian Mawson has spent years collecting the stories of former evacuees and this book includes the personal memories of over 100, in their own words. Their accounts reveal what it was like to settle into a new home with strangers, often staying for years. While many enjoyed life in the countryside, some escaping inner-city poverty, others endured ill-treatment and homesickness. A fascinating insight into the realities of wartime life, and a valuable oral history of a unique moment in British history.
£19.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Beneath the Killing Fields
Beneath the Killing Fields of the Western Front still lies a hidden landscape of industrialised conflict virtually untouched since 1918. This subterranean world is an ambiguous environment filled with material culture that that objectifies the scope and depth of human interaction with the diverse conflict landscapes of modern war. Covering the military reasoning for taking the war underground, as well as exploring the way that human beings interacted with these extraordinary alien environments, this book provides a more all-encompassing overview of the Western Front. The underground war was intrinsic to trench warfare and involved far more than simply trying to destroy the enemy's trenches from below. It also served as a home to thousands of men, protecting them from the metallic landscapes of the surface.With the aid of cutting edge fieldwork conducted by the author in these subterranean locales, this book combines military history, archaeology and anthropology together with primary data and unique imagery of British, French, German and American underground defences in order to explore the realities of subterranean warfare on the Western Front, and the effects on the human body and mind that living and fighting underground inevitably entailed.
£19.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Battles of Coronel and the Falklands, 1914
The defeat that Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock suffered at Coronel in 1914 at the hands of Maximilian Graf von Spee, one of Germany's most brilliant naval commanders, was the most humiliating blow to British naval prestige since the eighteenth century and a defeat that had to be avenged immediately. On 8 December 1914, the German squadron steamed towards Port Stanley, unaware that in the harbour lay two great British battle-cruisers, the 'Invincible' and 'Inflexible'. Realizing this, Spee had no option but to turn and flee. Hour by hour during that long day, the British ships closed in until, eventually, Spee was forced to confront the enemy. With extraordinary courage, and against hopeless odds, the German cruisers fought to the bitter end. At five-thirty that afternoon, the last ship slowly turned and rolled to the bottom. Cradock and Britain had been avenged.
£12.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Prince Eugene of Savoy
Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignan (1663-1736), French born of an Italian mother, was destined for the church, but fled France as a young man and chose the life of a soldier. He entered the service of the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I in 1683 and rose rapidly to become one of the greatest military commanders of the age, playing a leading role in the wars against both the Ottoman Turks and the French. James Falkner, in this the first full biography of Eugene to be published in English for forty years, reconstructs his military campaigns in compelling detail and describes his career as a politician and statesman. Eugene first showed his military genius during the siege of Vienna in 1683 where the Ottoman Turkish threat to western Europe was thrown back, and he commanded the Imperial army at the resounding victory over the Ottomans at Zenta in 1697. Most famously for English readers, he joined John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in the victory over the French at Blenheim in 1704 and serve
£15.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd British Fiji Class Cruisers and their Derivatives
A follow-up to the author's highly regarded history of British Town' class cruisers, this book takes the same approach, combining coverage of the development, design details and career highlights of the original class as well as the Uganda, Minotaur and Tiger designs that were derived from them. Often called the Colony' class, they were an attempt to incorporate the characteristics of the preceding Town' class within the reduced 8,000-ton limit agreed under the 1936 London Treaty. In general layout, they resembled the earlier class but adopted upright rather than raked funnels and masts. The use of a flat, transom stern conferred both hydrodynamic and internal space advantages.Not surprisingly, they turned out to be very cramped ships which struggled to accommodate all the wartime additions of extra electronics and light AA guns, as well as the increased crew needed to man them. Many of the later modifications to existing ships and alterations to the succeeding designs were attempts to
£45.00
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam
A century before Britain became involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, whole villages and towns in England, Ireland, Italy, Spain and other European countries were being depopulated by slavers, who transported the men, women and children to Africa where they were sold to the highest bidder. This is the forgotten slave trade. Starting with the practice of slavery in the ancient world, Simon Webb traces the history of slavery in Europe and examines the experiences of those who were forcibly taken from their homes. He describes how thousands of European boys were castrated and then sold in Africa and the Middle East, and also explains how the role of the newly-independent United States helped to put an end to the trade in European and American slaves. He also discuss the importance of towns such as Bristol, which had been an important staging-post for the transfer of English slaves to Africa over 1,000 years before it became a major centre for the slave trade in the eighteenth century. Reading this book will forever change how you view the slave trade and show that many commonly held beliefs about this controversial subject are almost wholly inaccurate and mistaken.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Wargames Terrain and Buildings: WWI Trench Systems
Although it was a global conflict, for many WW1 is synonymous with the war in the trenches of the Western Front. For anyone wargaming these battles a good trench system is a must. Douglas Hardy is a very experienced wargamer and terrain modeller and a member of the Western Front Association who has walked the battlefields many times. From the initial choice between stand-alone pieces on a mat or a fixed, bespoke layout, through to final detailing, he shares his experience, giving practical advice on building your own trench system. He considers the differences between British, German and French trenches, which differed in design and construction, as well as developments in defences through the phases of the war. A trench system is not just the trench itself of course, but also the dugouts, barbed wire entanglements, sandbags, gun emplacements and pillboxes. Shell holes and shattered forests are also covered. Each element is explained in step-by-step detail, illustrated with numerous colour photos and there are also reference photos of real trenches.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Stringbag: The Fairey Swordfish at War
During World War Two an American naval officer stared at a Swordfish for the first time. 'Where did that come from?' he asked. 'Fairey's', came the reply from a British naval officer standing nearby. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. 'That figures', he replied. This is a narrative account of the operations of the Fairey Swordfish throughout World War Two. The most famous of these was the attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto, crippling three battleships and damaging several other ships as well as the seaplane base and an oil storage depot. The Swordfish played a prominent part in the Battle of Matapan and in the sinking of the Bismark. Less happily, Swordfish were used in the unsuccessful and ill-prepared raid on the Germans at Petsamo and in the abortive attack on the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the Channel Dash in 1942. Throughout the book, the text is interwoven with personal accounts by naval airmen.
£15.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Seleukid Empire of Antiochus III, 223-187 BC
The second volume in John Grainger's history of the Seleukid Empire is devoted to the reign of Antiochus III. Too often remembered only as the man who lost to the Romans at Magnesia, Antiochus is here revealed as one of the most powerful and capable rulers of the age. Having emerged from civil war in 223 as the sole survivor of the Seleukid dynasty, he shouldered the burdens of a weakened and divided realm. Though defeated by Egypt in the Fourth Syrian War, he gradually restored full control over the empire. His great Eastern campaign took Macedonian arms back to India for the first time since Alexander's day and, returning west, he went on to conquer Thrace and finally wrest Syria from Ptolemaic control. Then came intervention in Greece and the clash with Rome leading to the defeat at Magnesia and the restrictive Peace of Apamea. Despite this, Antiochus remained ambitious, campaigning in the East again; when he died in 187 BC the empire was still one of the most powerful states in the world.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Shooting Down the Stealth Fighter: Eyewitness Accounts from Those Who Were There
With its futuristic and unmistakable design, the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk, the so-called 'Stealth Fighter', was the wonder of the age. Virtually undetectable by radar, this ground-attack aircraft could slip unseen through enemy defences to deliver its deadly payload on unsuspecting targets. Its effectiveness had been well demonstrated during the Gulf War of 1991, during which the F-117A achieved almost legendary status. But, at 20.42 hours on 27 March 1999, the military and aviation worlds were stunned when the impossible happened - a virtually obsolete Soviet-built surface-to-air missile system which had first been developed more than thirty years earlier, detected and shot down an F-117A, callsign 'Vega 31'. This incident took place during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. It was, and remains, at least officially, the only time that a stealth aircraft was detected and shot down by a ground-based missile system. In this book the authors, both of whom served in the Kosovo War, take the reader through every moment of that astounding event, from both the perspective of Lieutenant Colonel Dani's 3rd Battalion, 250th Air Defence Missile Brigade, a Yugolsav Army unit, and that of the pilot of the F-117A, Lieutenant Colonel Darrell Patrick Zelko, who ejected and survived the loss of his aircraft. The reader is placed in the cabin of the missile fire control centre and alongside 'Dale' Zelko in the cockpit of his stealth fighter as each second dramatically unfolds. Stealth characteristics are now regarded as a standard part of modern military aircraft design but with each generation of aircraft becoming increasingly, almost cripplingly, expensive to produce and operate compared with the simpler surface-to-air defence systems, the outcome of the battle between missile and stealth hangs in the balance. That this is the case might be seen in the strange fact that it is claimed that two other F-117As did not return to the U.S. at the end of the Kosovo War, though, mysteriously, their fate has never been revealed. Were they too victims of Yugoslav missiles? Though intended for the general reader, _Shooting Down the Stealth Fighter_ covers the technical details of the weapons involved and their deployment - and the authors should know, as one of them, Djordje Anicic, was a member of the Yugoslav team which brought down Zelko's aircraft.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Long Range Desert Group in Action 1940-1943: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives
The Long Range Desert Group has a strong claim to the first Special Forces unit in the British Army. This superb illustrated history follows the LRDG from its July 1940 formation as the Long Range Patrol in North Africa, tasked with intelligence gathering, mapping and reconnaissance deep behind enemy lines. Manned initially by New Zealanders, in 1940 the unit became the LRDG with members drawn from British Guards and Yeomanry regiments and Rhodesians. So successful were the LRDG patrols, that when the Special Air Service were formed, they often relied on their navigational and tactical skills to achieve their missions. After victory in North Africa the LRDG re-located to Lebanon before being sent on the ill-fated mission to the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean. Serving independently, when the Germans overwhelmed and captured the British garrisons, many LRDG personnel escaped using their well-honed skills. Many images in this, the first pictorial history of the LRDG, were taken unofficially by serving members. The result is a superb record of the LRDG's achievements, the personalities, their weapons and vehicles which will delight laymen and specialists alike.
£15.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Arsenal: The Story of a Football Club in 101 Lives
ARSENAL: THE STORY OF A FOOTBALL CLUB IN 101 LIVES tells the history of the Gunners through the biographies of key individuals associated with the club from its formation in the gas-lit days of Victorian Britain through to the present day. From David Danskin, the Scottish mechanical engineer and footballer who was the driving force behind the team raised at Dial Square, a workshop at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, to Arsene Wenger, the longest-serving and most successful manager in Arsenal's history. The in-depth stories of the characters - players, managers, chairmen - here paint a fascinating picture of how the club - indeed, the game of football itself - has developed from workers playing for fun to today's multi-million-pound business.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Faithful in Adversity: The Royal Army Medical Corps in the Second World War
The Royal Army Medical Corps was present during all engagements in the Second World War. From the frozen wastes of Norway through to liberation from the death camps of Germany and the Far East, RAMC personnel were frequently close to the front line, risking their lives to provide medical support to a mobile army in a mechanised war. Nearly 3,000 army medics were killed during the war as a result of enemy action and exposing themselves to dangerous tropical diseases. Using much previously unpublished material from public and private family archives, this book charts the story of those who remained true to the motto of the RAMC: Faithful in Adversity.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd A Hidden History of the Tower of London: England's Most Notorious Prisoners
Famed as the ultimate penalty for traitors, heretics and royalty alike, being sent to the Tower is known to have been experienced by no less than 8,000 unfortunate souls. Many of those who were imprisoned in the Tower never returned to civilisation and those who did, often did so without their head! It is hardly surprising that the Tower has earned itself a reputation among the most infamous buildings on the planet. There have, of course, been other towers. Practically every castle ever built has consisted of at least one; indeed, even by the late 14th century, the Tower proudly boasted no less than 21. Yet even as early as the 1100s, the effect that the first Tower had on the psyche of the local population was considerable. The sight of the dark four-pointed citadel - at the time the largest building in London - as it appeared against the backdrop of the expanding city gave rise to many legends, ranging from the exact circumstances of its creation to what went on within its strong walls. In ten centuries what once consisted of a solitary keep has developed into a complex castle around which the history of England has continuously evolved. So revered has it become that legend has it that should the Tower fall, so would the kingdom. Beginning with the early tales surrounding its creation, this book investigates the private life of an English icon. Concentrating on the Tower's developing role throughout the centuries, not in terms of its physical expansion into a site of unique architectural majesty or many purposes but through the eyes of those who experienced its darker side, it pieces together the, often seldom-told, human story and how the fates of many of those who stayed within its walls contributed to its lasting effect on England's - and later the UK's - destiny. From ruthless traitors to unjustly killed Jesuits, vanished treasures to disappeared princes and jaded wives to star-crossed lovers, this book provides a raw and at times unsettling insight into its unsolved mysteries and the lot of its unfortunate victims, thus explaining how this once typical castle came to be the place we will always remember as THE TOWER.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Americans on D-Day and in Normandy: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives
The experiences and achievements of the United States land, sea and air forces on 6 June 1944 and the weeks following have been deservedly well chronicled. Omaha Beach saw the fiercest fighting of the whole OVERLORD invasion and the opposition faced in the US sector shocked commanders and men at all levels. The outcome was in the balance and, thanks to the courage and determination shown by the attackers, game-changing failure was narrowly averted. This superb Images of War book examines, using contemporary and modern images and maps, the course of the campaign and its implication for both the American troops and the civilian population of the battlezone. These revealing images, both colour and black and white, are enhanced by full captions and the author's thoroughly researched text. The result is a graphic reminder of the liberation of Northern France and the extraordinary sacrifice made by men not just of the United States military but the other Allied nations.
£15.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Iran-Iraq War: The Lion of Babylon, 1980-1988
The bloody eight-year Iran-Iraq war is now almost forgotten, overshadowed by the subsequent Gulf War and Iraq War. However, it is best remembered for the unique so-called 'Tanker War' which threatened to strangle the world's oil supplies. At the time Tucker-Jones as a defence analyst wrote extensively on the war and now brings his expertise to bear with this account of a conflict fuelled by festering regional rivalries, the Cold War and the emerging threat posed by militant Shia Islam. Fought on land, at sea and in the air using some of the most modern weapons money could buy, Western-backed Saddam Hussein's Sunni Iraq and Shia Iran under the ayatollahs fought themselves to a standstill. Once Saddam's armoured blitzkrieg had been halted and Iran's human-wave counterattacks fought off, it became a war of attrition with major battles fought for the possession of Khorramshahr and Basra. Both sides resorted to chemical weapons and bombarding each other with missiles. When the war spilled over into the waters of the Gulf it sparked open Western intervention. Escalating attacks on oil tankers finally culminated in a ceasefire.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Normandy 1944: The Battle of the Hedgerows: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives
Just as the Anglo-Canadian forces in the east found it difficult to advance beyond Caen after D-Day, so the US First Army laboured to advance through the Norman bocage country in the west. The lethal struggle that developed there was a defining episode in the Normandy campaign, and this photographic history is a vivid introduction to it. Through a selection of over 150 carefully chosen and meticulously captioned�wartime photographs Simon Forty traces the course of the battle and gives the reader a graphic impression of the conditions, the terrain and the experience of the troops. The Germans mounted a tenacious defence. They fought from prepared positions in the high hedgerows. Each cramped field and narrow lane became a killing ground. But the Americans adapted their tactics and brought in special equipment including bulldozers and tanks with hedgerow cutters to force their way through. The losses were appalling as the Germans used snipers, mines, machineguns and artillery to great effect. Inexorably, however, and with enormous bravery, First Army solved their tactical problems, inflicted heavy casualties on the defenders and ground their way to Saint-L�.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Tank Wrecks of the Eastern Front 1941 - 1945
Four years of armoured battle on the Eastern Front in the Second World War littered the battlefields with the wrecks of destroyed and disabled tanks, and Anthony Tucker-JonesOs photographic history is a fascinating guide to them. It provides a graphic record of the various types of tank deployed by the Red Army and the Wehrmacht during the largest and most destructive confrontation between mechanized armies in military history. During the opening stages of the war the German victors regularly photographed and posed with destroyed Soviet armour. Operation Barbarossa left 17,000 smashed Soviet tanks in its wake, and the heavy and medium tanks such as the T-28, T-35, KV-1 and the T-34 proved to be a source of endless interest. Once the tide turned it was the turn of wrecked and burnt-out panzers D the Mk IVs, Tigers and Panthers D to be photographed by the victorious Red Army. As well as tracing the entire course of the war on the Eastern Front through the trail of broken armour, the photographs provide a wide-ranging visual archive of the tank types of the period that will appeal to everyone who is interested in tank warfare and to modellers and wargamers in particular.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Germany in the Great War: Arras, Third Ypres & Cambrai
This book documents the experiences of the Central Powers, specifically Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire during 1917, as they fought on land, at sea and in the air. Drawing on hundreds of contemporary photographs, many of them never previously published, this book examines the experiences of these three nations, spotlighting not only the events that occurred throughout the year, but the lives of those individuals fighting and dying to defend their homelands, families and friends. Each chapter includes a succinct overview of a single front or theatre of operation, complimenting the hundreds of professional and amateur photographs contained within. Though many of the images are of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies on the _Westfront_ and _Ostfront_, several additional chapters also explore the fighting across other, lesser-known fronts, including the _Sudwest Front_ and in Sinai and Palestine, and Mesopotamia. This book is an excellent pictorial guide that would be of benefit to anyone seeking to gain a better understanding of what life was like from the perspective of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman armies, and their peoples during the fourth year of the First World War.
£16.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Visiting the Somme and Ypres Battlefields Made Easy: A Helpful Guide Book for Groups and Individuals
Recommended in the Foreign Office Ministerial Reading List - Summer 2014 It does what it says on the tin, introducing the reader to the nuances of planning an itinerary for the Somme or the Ypres Salient. A comprehensive beginners guide. - Despatches (The Guild of Battlefield Guides) History teacher Gareth Hughes has compiled a clear, easy-to-read starter guide to the Western Front battlefields for teachers leading school parties, as well as the self-touring novice. He gives essential tour 'highlights' with suggestions for lunch stops, free time ideas and other helpful information for you to get the best out of your battlefield trip and be inspired to trace your own relatives' war stories. - Family Tree Magazine The book is well written and packed with useful information and some good supporting images - WWI Centenary This splendid book, released to coincide with the centenary of the war, will be invaluable to those visiting the battlefields, sites, museums, memorials and cemeteries of France and Belgium. It is intended for those planning and leading school groups and similar parties but is also ideal for individual/family visitors. Rather than list every site etc it provides realistic itineraries to the best places in the two major areas of the Somme and Ypres. Even these are flexible to allow party leaders suitable discretion. The author provides helpful information for each site such as its context in the War, visitor orientation, the narrative (the essential facts to engage, inform and entertain), suggested activity and relevant photos and maps. This combines to make every visit of maximum benefit and interest and yet reduce the workload of the party leaders. There are also valuable tips for lunch breaks, free time ideas and other helpful pointers.
£12.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Roman Legends Brought to Life
The legends of early Rome are among the most memorable of any in the world. They are also highly instructive. They taught generations of Romans about duty and obedience. Duty and obedience might not seem to amount to much these days, but it was precisely these virtues that made Rome great. The legends are not, however, merely self-congratulatory and they are rarely simple exercises in nationalist propaganda. On the contrary, many reveal their ancestors' dark side, which they expose unflinchingly. As in the case of Greek mythology, there is no authorised version of any Roman legend. The legends survived because they reminded the Romans who they were, what modest beginnings they came from, how on many occasions their city nearly imploded, and what type of men and women shaped their story. Defeat, loss, failure. That's where this story - the story of the boldest, most enduring, and most successful political experiment in human history - begins. It's the story of how a band of refugees escaped from the ruins of a burning city and came to establish themselves hundreds of miles to the west in the land of Hesperia, the Western Land, the land where the sun declines, aka Italia. It's the story of a people who by intermingling, compromise and sheer doggedness came to dominate first their region, then the whole of peninsula Italy, and finally the entire Mediterranean and beyond.
£20.00
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Border Towns Buses of London Country Transport North of the Thames 19692019
London Transport was created in 1933 with monopoly powers. Not only did it have exclusive rights to run bus (and tram and trolleybus) services in the Greater London area, it also ran services in a Country Area all around London. Green Line express services linked the country towns to London and in most cases across to other country towns the other side of the metropolis. This country area extended north as far as Hitchin, east to Brentwood, south to Crawley and west to Windsor. But what of the towns at the edge of the country area? Here the green London Transport buses would meet the bus companies whose operations extended across the rest of the counties of Essex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire etc. In some cases the town was at a node where more than one company worked in. At Luton there was a municipal fleet. Elsewhere, such as at Aylesbury there were local independent operators who had a share in the town services. It would all change from 1970 when the London Transport Country A
£25.20
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Red Army Weapons of the Second World War
While the Red Army's arsenal at the start of the Second World War included weapons dating back to the Great War or earlier, the 1930s' modernization programme had introduced the automatic Tokarev pistol and self-loading Tokarev rifle. Its small arms were soon replaced by mass-produced sub-machine guns, such as the PPSh 1941, nicknamed the PePeSha,'. Supplementing the submachine guns, the Degtyarev Light Machine Gun DP-27. Fitted with a circular pan magazine, it received the not-unsurprising nickname Record Player.' New mortars and towed artillery pieces, ranging from 76mm to 203mm, entered service in the pre-war years. In addition to a wide range of towed, self-propelled and anti-tank guns, the Soviets fielded the Katyusha rocket launchers in 1941, nicknamed the Stalin's organ' by the Germans. The 1930s saw the introduction of the BT light tank series. The iconic T-34 medium tank series came into service in late 1940, joined by the IS-2 heavy tank from early 1944, the prefix letters IS' translates to Joseph Stalin. These formidable AFVs led the Red Army to victory in May 1945 over Nazi Germany. All these weapons and more are covered with numerous images in this authoritative overview of the subject.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Captured at Singapore: A Diary of a Far East Prisoner of War
What would it be like to leave your loved ones behind knowing you may never see them again? Then depart on a ship in the dead of night heading for an unknown destination and find yourself in the heat of a battle which concludes in enemy conditions so terrible that your survival in captivity is still under threat? Cultivated from a small, faded, address book secretly written by a young soldier in the Royal Army Service Corps, Captured at Singapore, is a POW story of adventure, courage resilience and luck. In 1940, Londoner Stanley Moore became Driver T/170638 and trained for desert warfare along with many others in the British Army's 18th Division. Their mission, they thought, was to fight against Hitler and fascism in the Middle East. But in a change of plan and destination, he and his fellow servicemen became sacrificial lambs on a continent much further from home. After tough rudimentary combat training in England, Stan's division set off on a secret overseas mission. After months at sea, and several unexpected ports of call, their convoy was redirected to the other side of the world as the Imperial Japanese Army rampaged across Manchuria, Hong Kong and other parts of Asia. Singapore was under sole British jurisdiction and a large naval base had been built after the First World War to defend the island at the foot of the Malay Peninsula. The British Government believed Japan would never attack their prize territory and so left Singapore to fight for itself with limited troops and outdated equipment. But after an attack on Pearl Harbor, the under-trained and undersupplied 18th Division was redirected to fight the Japanese. Using extensive research and personal documents, the authors' account - via their father's small, faded, diary and his 1990 tape recording - tells of Stan's journey and arrival in Keppel Harbour under shellfire; the horrific 17 day battle to defend the island, the Japanese Admonition and the harrowing forced labour conditions after capitulation. Only a small percentage of the 85,000 British troops returned after the war. Captivity and years of trauma ultimately stole years of the young soldiers' lives, which they were later ordered to forget by the British Government. The aim of this work is to provide information for future generations to understand how ordinary men died under horrific conditions of war, and how the lucky survived.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Doenitz, U-Boats, Convoys: The British Version of His Memoirs from the Admiralty's Secret Anti-Submarine Reports
The memoirs of Admiral Karl Doenitz, Ten Years and Twenty Days, are a fascinating first-hand account of the Battle of the Atlantic as seen from the headquarters of the U-boat fleet. Now, for the first time noted naval historian Jak P. Mallmann Showell has combined Doenitz's memoirs in a parallel text with the British Admiralty's secret Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports to produce a unique view of the U-boat war as it was perceived at the time by both sides. The British Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports were classified documents issued only to senior officers hunting U-boats, and were supposed to have been returned to the Admiralty and destroyed at the end of the War, but by chance a set survived in the archives of the Royal Navy's Submarine Museum in Gosport, allowing the reader a hitherto unavailable insight into the British view of the Battle of the Atlantic as it was being fought. Together with the authors commentary adding information that was either unknown or too secret to reveal at the time, this book gives possibly the most complete contemporary account of the desperate struggle in the North Atlantic in the Second World War.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Strike Wings: Special Anti-Shipping Squadrons 1942-45
In November 1942 the RAF formed special Strike Wings to attack the heavily defended and seemingly invulnerable convoys that brought Germanys vital supplies of iron ore from Scandinavia down the coast of Europe to feed its war machine. The outcome was a series sea/air battles at close quarters, fought with increasing ferocity until the last days of the war. The Germans tried everything against the Beaufighters and Mosquitos of the Strike Wings fighters, intense flak, parachute mines and even flame-throwers and the casualties were appallingly heavy on both sides. In this classic account of one of the neglected yet crucial theatres of the air war Roy Nesbit, himself a survivor of strike aircraft of Coastal Command, describes these complex battles from British and German records, assisted by first-hand accounts from some of the brave airmen who took part. He also analyzes the effects of the tactics employed on the German war economy, with some startling conclusions. The result is a fascinating, clearly written and vivid history of events that were little publicized during the war for reasons of security. His book includes detailed diagrams of some of the key attacks and features some astonishing photographs taken in action.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The German Army in the Spring Offensives 1917: Arras, Aisne and Champagne
After the great battles of 1916, the Allied Armies planned to launch massive attacks North and South of the Somme. The German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in March 1917 forced the new French CinC General Nivelle to rethink and the French embarked on a major attack in the Aisne area and along the Chemin des Dames, with the British conducting large scale diversionary operations around Arras. The French suffered disastrously and, rendered incapable of further offensive operations, it fell to the British to step up the pressure, which they did albeit at a terrible price. This latest work by expert Jack Sheldon describes the event of Spring 1917 from the defenders perspective. In particular it reveals the methods the Germans used to smash the French attacks and Oberst Fritz von Lossbergs transformation of the defences in the Arras front. Actions described in detail are the bitter battles around Monchy Le Preun, the Roeux Chemical works and Bullecourt as well as the capture of Vimy Ridge.
£15.99