An ace over the Western Front-in his own words
The Canadian author of this book, William Bishop, volunteered for imperial service as a cavalryman as the Great War called its colonial men to the colours. A brief encounter with aircraft-the cavalry of the clouds-and a prolonged encounter with mud persuaded him that his war should instead be fought in the skies with the RFC. Bishop flew first as an observer and eventually, on winning his double wings, as the pilot of a 'scout'-the famous early fighter aircraft of the pioneering 'dogfight days' of aerial combat. Most of us know that the lives of pilots over the Western Front were perilously short, but Bishop had found his vocation and he began destroying enemy aircraft with a ruthless efficiency. His final total of 47 kills established him as a notable allied 'ace' and earned him a succession of decorations including the Victoria Cross. Remarkably, through a combination of skill and good luck, he survived his combat experiences to be the author of this excellent first-hand account, written while the war still raged, of the First World War in the air from a pilots perspective. Readers can be assured that this exciting book is everything one could hope for, with vital descriptions of duels with the 'Red Baron' and his Flying Circus together with many other riveting experiences. Available in paperback and hardcover with dustjacket.

Exiting war explores a particular 1918-20 'moment' in the British Empire's history, between the First World War's armistices of 1918, and the peace treaties of 1919 and 1920. That moment, we argue, was a challenging and transformative time for the Empire. While British authorities successfully answered some of the post-war tests they faced, such as demobilisation, repatriation, and fighting the widespread effects of the Spanish flu, the racial, social, political and economic hallmarks of their imperialism set the scene for a wide range of expressions of loyalties and disloyalties, and anticolonial movements. The book documents and conceptualises this 1918-20 'moment' and its characteristics as a crucial three-year period of transformation for and within the Empire, examining these years for the significant shifts in the imperial relationship that occurred and as laying the foundation for later change in the imperial system. -- .

Humor and entertainment were vital to the war effort during World War I. While entertainment provided relief to soldiers in the trenches, it also built up support for the war effort on the home front. This book looks at transnational war culture by examining seemingly light-hearted discourses on the Great War.

Three accounts of the brave women volunteers of the V.A.Ds during the Great War
Although the wars of the later 19th century, such as the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, offered insights into what warfare would become as the industrial age developed, nothing could prepare anyone for the global conflict that became the First World War. Here was a lethal combination of warring nations, whose troops were armed with the most sophisticated weapons that technology could devise, each with the means of mass production to manufacture and deliver them. For the first time it was possible to wage war on a grand scale on land, in the air and beneath and upon the oceans. This was a war where millions of men took part in battle and, in consequence, stripped the production and support services workforces from their home countries. Women, already impatient for political reform, stepped forward to make a vital contribution to the war effort and in so doing changed their status in western society forever. There were many volunteer organisations who were relied upon to support the fighting troops, including the Scottish Women's Hospitals, the F.A.N.Ys, the Y.M.C.A and those who are the subject of this book-the V.A.Ds-the Voluntary Aid Detachments. Three quarters of V.A.Ds were women and girls and they became ambulance drivers, mechanics, cooks, clerks and learned trades which were normally the province of men. But it is in their role as nurses during the conflict for which they are especially remembered. The V.A.Ds included both trained and untrained nurses who worked principally under the direction of the Red Cross and the Order of St. John. This special Leonaur book about the V.A.Ds, published to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, contains three essential and riveting first-hand acounts by those who served, and provides invaluable insights into the developing role of women during those years of crisis. Recommended.
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.

Chasseur of 1914 - The first months of war through the eyes of a French regular cavalry officer. This is a fascinating and unusual book. Written in the early years of the Great War in Europe by a young professional officer of Chasseurs a Cheval, this is a lyrical work full of enthusiasm, idealism and conviction in the spirit of the Light Cavalry. In places the reader can easily imagine it is the account of a Napoleonic or 2nd Empire cavalryman - so similar are the scenes of campaigning against the common Prussian enemy. Dupont's regiment is brigaded with the Chasseurs de Afrique engaged in mounted warfare at the Battle of the Marne and after. As 1915 approaches they are dismounted to fight as infantry in Belgium where Dupont takes part in the Battle of the Yser. This book offers a 'snapshot' in time - a view of war in which the writer still dreams of Lasalle and Murat untarnished by the war of attrition to come. .

Asquith was at the pinnacle of his success when the course of his life and that of his country was changed by the outbreak of the First World War. Instead of being over by Christmas 1914, the war became a stalemate, with opposing trenches extending from the Channel coast to the Swiss border. During the initial stages of the war Asquith's oratory, tact and skill, combined with his imperturbability and prestige, made him indispensable. As the war dragged on, his failure to show the ruthlessness needed to win at any cost made him ill-suited to direct the nation in total war. In December 1916 Asquith was manoeuvred out of Downing Street by Lloyd George. Asquith as War Leader is the first comprehensive study of this exceptionally talented Prime Minister's war record. In a thorough examination of British war policy, with its evolutionary shifts and internal dissensions, George H. Cassar has defined the precise nature of Asquith's involvement and responsibility. He describes Asquith's part in bringing Britain into the war, in shaping war aims and strategy, and in mobilising the nation's resources. Because he was not the Prime Minister who won in 1918, Asquith's achievements in dealing with the problems of fighting a war on an unprecedented scale have been insufficiently recognised.

Between 1914 and 1918, military, press and amateur photographers produced thousands of pictures. Either classified in military archives specially created with this purpose in 1915, collected in personal albums or circulated in illustrated magazines, photographs were supposed to tell the story of the war. Picturing the Western Front argues that photographic practices also shaped combatants and civilians' war experiences. Doing photography (taking pictures, posing for them, exhibiting, cataloguing and looking at them) allowed combatants and civilians to make sense of what they were living through. Photography mattered because it enabled combatants and civilians to record events, establish or reinforce bonds with one another, represent bodies, place people and events in imaginative geographies and making things visible, while making others, such as suicide, invisible. Photographic practices became, thus, frames of experience. -- .

How the Great War came to the cinema screen
Everyone familiar with motion picture footage of the First World War on the Western Front will certainly have witnessed the talent, daring, uniquely invaluable and enduring work of the author of this book, Geoffrey Malins. Malins was one of two 'Official War Office Kinematographers' authorised to film the allied armies in action in France. There have been comments detrimental to Malins' character, he might have been guilty of embellishment as regards his own actions (no strange phenomenon in a military memoir) and he certainly downplayed the role of his colleague J. B. McDowell to the point of invisibility, but it is pointless to concentrate on the imperfections of the man when balanced against his indisputable achievements. One thing is certain, our knowledge of the Great War would be poorer without Malins. Here was a 'movie man' prepared to go into the danger zone to record the reality of the war of wire, the blood and trenches the ordinary 'Tommy' knew, while dragging around the most cumbersome equipment. His most famous film, 'The Battle of the Somme, ' filmed in 1916 and considered to be excessively graphic by many at the time, was viewed by over 20 million people and is shown on television to the present day. Despite producing some now well known fake 'over the top' sequences, Malins was responsible for the iconic footage of the blowing of the Hawthorn Crater and anyone interested in the Great War and the earliest days of war cinematography will be fascinated to read the story of how it came about. The exploits of Malins and his colleagues make no less gripping reading.
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 noted World War I scholar examines the critical decisions and events that led to Germany's defeat, arguing that the German loss was caused by collapse at home as well as on the front. Much has been written about the causes for the outbreak of World War I and the ways in which the war was fought, but few historians have tackled the reasons why the Germans, who appeared on the surface to be winning for most of the war, ultimately lost. This book, in contrast, presents an in-depth examination of the complex interplay of factors-social, cultural, military, economic, and diplomatic-that led to Germany's defeat. The highly readable work begins with an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the two coalitions and points out how the balance of forces was clearly on the side of the Entente in a long and drawn-out war. The work then probes the German plan to win the war quickly and the resulting campaigns of August and September 1914 that culminated in the devastating defeat in the First Battle of the Marne. Subsequent chapters discuss the critical factors and decisions that led to Germany's loss, including the British naval blockade, the role of economic factors in maintaining a consensus for war, and the social impact of material deprivation. Starts a new and fuller discussion of Germany's defeat that goes beyond the battlefields of the Western Front Argues that Germany's defeat was caused by a complex interplay of domestic, social, and economic forces as well as by military and diplomatic factors Integrates the internal problems the German people experienced with Germany's defeats at sea and on land Highlights the critical role played by Britain and the United States in bringing about Germany's defeat Discusses the failures of German military planning and the failure of the nation's political leaders and military leaders to understand that war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means

First published in 1914, this is a systematic treatment of the people whose contribution to civilization of the Nile Valley was for so long a source of controversy.

This book tackles cultural mobilization in the First World War as a plural process of identity formation and de-formation. It explores eight different settings in which individuals, communities and conceptual paradigms were mobilized. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it interrogates one of the most challenging facets of the history of the Great War, one that keeps raising key questions on the way cultures respond to times of crisis. Mobilization during the First World War was a major process of material and imaginative engagement unfolding on a military, economic, political and cultural level, and existing identities were dramatically challenged and questioned by the whirl of discourses and representations involved.

Healing the nation is a study of caregiving during the Great War, exploring life behind the lines for ordinary British soldiers who served on the Western Front. Using a variety of literary, artistic, and architectural evidence, this study draws connections between the war machine and the wartime culture of caregiving: the product of medical knowledge and procedure, social relationships and health institutions that informed experiences of rest, recovery and rehabilitation in sites administered by military and voluntary-aid authorities. Rest huts, hospitals, and rehabilitation centres served not only as means to sustain manpower and support for the war but also as distinctive sites where soldiers, their caregivers and the public attempted to make sense of the conflict and the unprecedented change it wrought. Revealing aspects of wartime life that have received little attention, this study shows that Britain's 'generation of 1914' was a group bound as much by a comradeship of healing as by a comradeship of the trenches. The author has used an extensive collection of illustrations in his discussion, and the book will make fascinating reading for students and specialists in the history of war, medicine and gender studies. -- .

The war for colonial Africa
This very substantial book, written by the two South African official correspondents on the campaign, narrates the expedition in 1914-15 which led to the conquest of German South-West Africa (the region now known as Namibia). One author accompanied the Northern Army and the other, the Southern Army. During the 19th century the great powers of Europe raced to establish themselves in all corners of the globe for colonisation, trade and political influence. In the 'great scramble for Africa, ' the British and German empires had established themselves, by degrees, in the east and west of the continent. In the years before the outbreak of the First World War these colonies existed, more or less, in harmony but once hostilities erupted German and British settlers found themselves living in very close proximity to hostile forces. The British had the advantage of numbers since colonisation had long been a policy, though the Germans compensated for this measure with the abilities of their military commanders and the expertise and quality of their European and locally raised troops. (South Africa itself entered the fray, its forces led by commanders who a little over a decade earlier had led the Boer burghers in their attempts to form a nation independent of the British Empire.) This campaign of mobility was fought in the searing heat of a desert region and was often a 'tip and run affair' as mounted troops traversed huge tracts of inhospitable terrain. Those interested in the First World War often find it's 'side-show' theatres fascinating because they differed so completely from the war of stalemate and attrition on the Western Front. This is a very thorough and comprehensive book written by competent authors who experienced the campaign at first hand and were well qualified to record both their personal impressions and an informed overview of the events they witnessed. This edition of the text is liberally enhanced by the inclusion of many photographs taken on the campaign.
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.