This lively book re-evaluates six salient aspects of Lloyd George's role in the "lost peace" of Versailles. In a reexamination of six controversial episodes 1919-1940, it reviews his protean role at the Paris Peace conference, 1919, his strategy on reparations, his abortive guarantee treaty to France, and the emergence at the Conference of Appeasement. It then reassesses his controversial visit to Hitler, and his bids to halt WWII after the fall of Poland and France.

The Shelf2Life WWI Memoirs Collection is an engaging set of pre-1923 materials that describe life during the Great War through memoirs, letters and diaries. Poignant personal narratives from soldiers, doctors and nurses on the front lines to munitions workers and land girls on the home front, offer invaluable insight into the sacrifices men and women made for their country. Photographs and illustrations intensify stories of struggle and survival from the trenches, hospitals, prison camps and battlefields. The WWI Memoirs Collection captures the pride and fear of the war as experienced by combatants and non-combatants alike and provides historians, researchers and students extensive perspective on individual emotional responses to the war.

The dawn of combat in the air
Today everyone is so familiar with aircraft, air travel and the fact that virtually every nation's defence force includes an aerial component, so it is easy to forget that there are many people still alive whose parents were born before any practical form of working aircraft. The Wright Brothers had achieved sustained heavier than air flight in 1903-just over 100 years ago; that was only eleven years before the outbreak of the First World War, the first war in which combat took to the the skies. During the four years of the conflict the potential for aircraft in all their various forms and in all their viable tactical roles was pursued and exploited as much as the technology of the time would allow. This change in the nature of warfare (which added the first new dimension to conflict in millennia) was seen as incredible to many at the time. Certainly the impetus given to the development of powered flight by the First World War cannot be overestimated. A number of books were written during those early days of air warfare, though their number remains comparatively few, some were written by aviators themselves and some were general or unit histories. Others gathered incidents, experiences and anecdotes into anthologies which enabled an eager readership to understand what combat in the skies actually involved. This is one of those books. It covers pilot training and includes, among other things, accounts of aerial warfare from the allied perspective including night flights, bombing, Zeppelin hunting, raids, dog fights and sea-plane activity. 'The Way of the Air' concludes with an interesting hypothesis of how manned flight could have developed in the post-war period. This interesting First World War 'reader' will be a welcome addition to the libraries of all those interested in the early days of aerial warfare.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

This book, first published in 1963, discusses the events of the Paris Peace Conference- the meeting of Allied victors following the end of World War I to set peace terms. Lord Hankey discusses the political and military terms and issues, as well as those of individual countries. This book is ideal for students of modern history.

Georges Guynemer, Knight of the Air
by Henry Bordeaux
The Chevalier of Flight: Captain Guynemer
by Mary R. Parkman
'Until one has given all, one has given nothing'
Georges Guynemer
This special Leonaur edition contains two accounts of one the most most honoured French fighter aces of the First World War, Georges Guynemer. Born into a wealthy Parisian family, Guynemer was a sickly child and was initially rejected for military service, but through determination and perseverance he was first accepted as a mechanic in the opening year of the war and later qualified as a pilot flying a Morane-Saulnier aircraft in Escadrille MS. 3. In 1915 the squadron was renamed Escadrille N. 3 and re-equipped with Nieuport 10 fighter aircraft. It was while flying the Nieuport that Guynemer became an acknowledged 'ace' and established himself as a hero of his nation. By the end of 1916 he had 25 'kills' to his credit and his face-and his famous aircraft with the stork insignia-had became iconic. Lionised by the press and now influential, Guynemer involved himself in aircraft development and in 1917, flying a Spad VII-one of the aircraft he had helped improve-he was the first pilot to shoot down a German Gotha GIII heavy bomber. By July 1917 Guynemer had chalked up 50 kills. Shy and embarrassed by the attention he received as a national figure, Guynemer struggled with his fame, but this, ironically, made him even more attractive to a public eager for a 'chevalier' to divert their thoughts from the industrial scale, grinding attrition of the trenches. Georges Guynemer was reported lost in action over Belgium in September 1917 at the age of 22. Awarded many of his country's highest honours he remained an inspirational figure to the French throughout the Great War.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

A famous battalion on the Western Front
The appalling losses to the British regular army during the first period of the Great War prompted the creation of the New Army-an enormous influx of citizen soldiers driven by feelings of patriotism determined to 'do their bit' for the cause. Such a massive increase in the size of the army required a huge expansion in the number of battalions to accommodate them. These came under a myriad of identities-public schools, chums, footballers etc-and included adding battalions to well known regiments of the regular army. The Royal Fusiliers gained many such battalions and the subject of this book, the 23rd, was one of the most notable. As its name suggests the battalion attracted a distinctive type-particularly those with a spirit of sportsmanship and adventure. The war service of this battalion was as exemplary as any that served on the Western Front and the places it fought-listed in detail within these pages-are a catalogue of the famous actions of the conflict, though perhaps its greatest day of reckoning came at Delville Wood in 1916 during the Somme offensive. Available in soft cover and hard cover with dust jacket for collectors.

The Amazon History Book of the Year 2013 is a magisterial chronicle of the calamity that befell Europe in 1914 as the continent shifted from the glamour of the Edwardian era to the tragedy of total war. In 1914, Europe plunged into the 20th century's first terrible act of self-immolation - what was then called The Great War. On the eve of its centenary, Max Hastings seeks to explain both how the conflict came about and what befell millions of men and women during the first months of strife. He finds the evidence overwhelming, that Austria and Germany must accept principal blame for the outbreak. While what followed was a vast tragedy, he argues passionately against the 'poets' view', that the war was not worth winning. It was vital to the freedom of Europe, he says, that the Kaiser's Germany should be defeated. His narrative of the early battles will astonish those whose images of the war are simply of mud, wire, trenches and steel helmets. Hastings describes how the French Army marched into action amid virgin rural landscapes, in uniforms of red and blue, led by mounted officers, with flags flying and bands playing. The bloodiest day of the entire Western war fell on 22 August 1914, when the French lost 27,000 dead. Four days later, at Le Cateau the British fought an extraordinary action against the oncoming Germans, one of the last of its kind in history. In October, at terrible cost they held the allied line against massive German assaults in the first battle of Ypres.The author also describes the brutal struggles in Serbia, East Prussia and Galicia, where by Christmas the Germans, Austrians, Russians and Serbs had inflicted on each other three million casualties. This book offers answers to the huge and fascinating question 'what happened to Europe in 1914?', through Max Hastings's accustomed blend of top-down and bottom-up accounts from a multitude of statesmen and generals, peasants, housewives and private soldiers of seven nations. His narrative pricks myths and offers some striking and controversial judgements. For a host of readers gripped by the author's last international best-seller 'All Hell Let Loose', this will seem a worthy successor.

"Spies of the Kaiser" examines the scope and objectives of German covert operations in Great Britain before and during the First World War. It assesses the effect of German espionage on Anglo-German relations and discusses the extent to which the fear of German espionage in the United Kingdom shaped the British intelligence community in the early twentieth century. The study is based on original archival material, including hitherto unexploited German records and recently declassified British documents.

This book shows the strong influence of judgements made of Wilson by the British diplomatists during the early years of his national prominence (1912-1914) on the way the British dealt with Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. It also shows the strong effect which practitioners of the so-called "Old Diplomacy" had on Lloyd George on this key issue of wartime and peace diplomacy. It shows that the British diplomatists viewed Wilson as a very successful American politician, but not as a prophet, or saviour. The religious imagery used by certain historians and more junior British diplomats, such as Harold Nicolson and John Maynard Keynes does not reflect the views of their more senior colleagues.

The famous camel borne infantry of the Middle East campaigns
Oliver Hogue's account of the Imperial Camel Corps in action during the desert and Palestine campaigns of the First World War is one of the first books written on the subject shortly after the events themselves took place. Hogue was a serving Australian soldier with the unit and so had the advantage of witnessing the events portrayed here at first hand. His is an easy reading, personable and journalistic style-very much of its day-which weaves a romance into this story of war against the declining Ottoman Turkish Empire and it's German allies. There are very few books concerning the Camel Corps and this is a true rarity and its re-publication after so many years will be warmly greeted by aficionados of the subject.

This book examines the working of the Munition of War Acts 1915-1917, during the First World War. The munitions code, parts of which remained in force until 1921, appeared at first to constitute a radical break with the pre-war voluntarist system of industrial relations. It aimed to prevent strikes by law, it imposed wage controls and tighter factory discipline and discouraged munitions workers from leaving their jobs. Munitions tribunals were established to enforce the law. Using, among other sources, the evidence offered by the tribunal proceedings under the Acts, the author suggests that a policy of strict enforcement of the law was transformed to one of sensitive conflict management, involving trade unionists, employers, and the tribunal judges. The identification of complex working-class attitudes to the wartime state accounts largely for the creation of this modus vivendi, despite the controversial nature of the legislation. This book, though dealing with events which arose during wartime in an atmosphere of militarism, radicalism as well as patriotism, inflation and full employment, may nevertheless offer glimpses of insight to analysts of modern industrial relations.

Donald Hankey was a writer who saw himself as a 'student of human nature' and peacetime Edwardian Britain as a society at war with itself. Wounded in a murderous daylight infantry charge near Ypres, Hankey began sending despatches to The Spectator from hospital in 1915. Trench life, wrote Hankey, taught that 'the gentleman' is a type not a social class. In one calm, humane, eyewitness report after another under the byline 'A Student in Arms', Hankey revealed how the civilian volunteers of Kitchener's Army, many with little stake in Edwardian society, put their betters to shame nonetheless. A runaway best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic, Hankey's prose vied in popularity with the poetry of Rupert Brooke. After he was killed on the Somme in another daylight infantry charge, Hankey joined Brooke as an international symbol of promise foregone. British propaganda backed publication in the-then neutral United States, yet at home Hankey had to dodge the censors to tell the truth as he saw it. This, the first scholarly biography, has been made possible by the recovery of Hankey papers long thought lost. Dr Davies traces the life of an Edwardian rebel from privileged birth into a banking dynasty that had owned slaves to spokesman for the ordinary man who, when put to the test of battle, proves to be not-so-ordinary. This study of Hankey's life, writing and vast audience - military and civilian - enlarges our understanding of how throughout the English-speaking world people managed to fight or endure a war for which little had prepared them.

Writers at War addresses the most immediate representations of the First World War in the prose of Ford Madox Ford, May Sinclair, Siegfried Sassoon and Mary Borden; it interrogates the various ways in which these writers contended with conveying their war experience from the temporal and spatial proximity of the warzone and investigates the multifarious impact of the war on the (re)development of their aesthetics. It also interrogates to what extent these texts aligned with or challenged existing social, cultural, philosophical and aesthetic norms. While this book is concerned with literary technique, the rich existing scholarship on questions of gender, trauma and cultural studies on World War I literature serves as a foundation. This book does not oppose these perspectives but offers a complementary approach based on close critical reading. The distinctiveness of this study stems from its focus on the question of representation and form and on the specific role of the war in the four authors' literary careers. This is the first scholarly work concerned exclusively with theorising prose written from the immediacy of the war. This book is intended for academics, researchers, PhD candidates, postgraduates and anyone interested in war literature.

Two linked books of the Irish on many fronts of the Great War
This book concerns the service of the regiments of the British Army raised in Ireland before and during the First World War together with those with Irish affiliations. So within its pages readers will discover not only The Irish Guards, the Connaught Rangers, The Royal Munster Fusiliers and many other regiments with long and venerable histories and battle honours but also the London Irish, the Tyneside Irish and the battalions of the new army. Each chapter features a particular front or action providing an excellent overview of the Irish in action throughout the conflict. Here we join them on the Retreat from Mons, on the Gallipoli peninsula, at Loos and during the Somme offensive. No account of the Irish could possibly be complete without the inclusion, as here, of anecdotes from the irrepressible Irish soldier himself, with all his wry humour and indomitable bravery and fighting prowess. This book brings together two volumes on the same theme by the same author. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.

The Shelf2Life WWI Memoirs Collection is an engaging set of pre-1923 materials that describe life during the Great War through memoirs, letters and diaries. Poignant personal narratives from soldiers, doctors and nurses on the front lines to munitions workers and land girls on the home front, offer invaluable insight into the sacrifices men and women made for their country. Photographs and illustrations intensify stories of struggle and survival from the trenches, hospitals, prison camps and battlefields. The WWI Memoirs Collection captures the pride and fear of the war as experienced by combatants and non-combatants alike and provides historians, researchers and students extensive perspective on individual emotional responses to the war.

A highland regiment at war in the East
When this book was originally published both the regiment and author remained anonymous. Today we know it concerns the wartime experiences of the 2nd Battalion, The Black Watch and that its author-an officer of the regiment-was Blampied. To make the book more relevant to modern readers references to the regiment, division etc. have been inserted into this edition. The war in Mesopotamia-known as Iraq since the 6th century-against the Ottoman Turkish empire was very different to the experience of the Western Front, but the fighting could be no less fierce and in one of its earliest engagements the regiment suffered terribly, providing yet another example of how the Great War destroyed 'family' regiments in minutes.
This book provides an excellent insight into a highland regiment at war and is particularly interesting since the theatre of operations is familiar as the same one as the most recent conflict in the region.

Lord D'Abernon was the first British ambassador to Berlin after the First World War. This study, which challenges his positive historical reputation, assesses all the key aspects of Anglo-German relations in the early 1920s. Particular attention is paid to the reparations question and to issues of international security. Other topics include D'Abernon's relationship with the principal British and German politicians of the period and his attitude towards American involvement in European diplomacy.

With the Middlesex Regiment against the Bolsheviks 1918-19
This unusual book from the First World War period. It tells of the attempts of the British-in company with European and American allies and the Japanese-to stem the red tide of Bolshevism in Russia by providing military aid to the White Russian forces. These are the experiences of the men of Middlesex Regiment-'B-oners'-already worn out in other theatres of war and hoping their days of campaigning were about to be over-as they rose to an extraordinary challenge in the harshest of environments in the Siberian winter. This is a fascinating book for those interested in the sideshows of the Great War in which the typically stolid 'Tommy' served-here portrayed in the most affectionate terms by the author-who was also their Colonel. It is also a vital work for those interested in the Russian Revolution, the Civil War and the policies and attitudes of the involved nations as they created the conditions for another World War and helped establish the international balance of power for three quarters of a century.

The London Rifles in the Trenches
The London Rifle Brigade was one of the famous territorial regiments that saw service during the Great War. This book-for the sake of good value-brings together two accounts of its service on the Western Front. The first is a short history written by an anonymous author that briefly, with the aid of photographs and maps, outlines the activities of the regiment during its time in Europe; the reader can therefore follow the Rifles battalions through the war in detail. The second title in this volume is Gilbert Nobb's 'On the Right of the British Line.' Nobbs was an officer of the regiment and saw much active service before being seriously wounded. His first hand account adds the immediacy of personal experiences in the trenches and under fire to the accompanying history. Available in softcover and hardback with dust jacket for collectors.