Two first accounts by early aviators
This special Leonaur 'good value' edition contains two accounts of the early days of powered flight. The first book, written just before the outbreak of the First World War, describes in depth the training of French military pilots up to the point where they are qualified. It contains much of historical interest and the process is explained, in considerable detail, from the trainee pilot's viewpoint as he grappled to master his machine. His numerous errors and how the aircraft performed as they were made are elaborated. The author came into contact with several types of aircraft and he describes the characteristics, performance and mechanics of each. So this book provides essential insights into the practicalities of being a fighter pilot in the imminent conflict. The second work is by a British pilot who was fully engaged in the air war over France. He was shot down and captured by the 'Bosch, ' he escaped and was again captured, and he underwent many other adventures before finally returning to his homeland. Accounts of pilots and aviation from the pioneer days of flying are comparatively few in number and these two short first hand narratives, essential reading for students of the subject, would have been unlikely to see republication as individual books.
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.

The war for the British life-line of the English Channel
Throughout history the English Channel has both preserved Britain and been its most vulnerable border. This short span of sea was dominated by the Royal Navy for over 150 years before the outbreak of the Great War. A new war-the first major conflict of the technological age-brought new dangers and challenges. A constant traffic of men and materials crossed the Channel to serve and supply the armies locked in a death struggle on the continent and this vital artery had to remain open and effective at all times to ensure victory and survival. Enemy submarines, surface flotillas and batteries of artillery remained dangerously close at hand, and well defended ports and harbours provided a continual threat to allied traffic and forces. This is the story of a fierce naval war fought in a narrow sea-way by one who experienced it. It is a story of naval battles and daring raids, of the bombing arm of the emergent air force and of the submarine service at its most daring. Above all it is a riveting story of human courage and endurance that will fascinate every student of the First World War.

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.

Primary documents from the World War I era bring to life the causes, events and consequences of those tumultuous and violent years. Varied perspectives provide a valuable overview of the many and often complicated reactions by Americans to Pre-war European politics, Archduke Ferdinand's assassination, the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, the major battles fought, and of the eventual and controversial entry into the war by the United States, among others. Will be a valued resource for researchers seeking to tap into contemporary attitudes toward events long gone.

The Great War in the Middle East as seen by a British artilleryman
Antony Bluett, a serving member of the Honourable Artillery Company, has given us a vital account of the Great War as it was fought in the Egyptian Desert, across the Sinai peninsula into Palestine, the capture of Jerusalem and on to victory in Lebanon and Syria. He tells his story as he saw the war from with his battery of guns-which played its part in this untypical theatre of fluid manoeuvring that brought about the fall of the declining Turkish Ottoman Empire. His was not simply a war of artillery duels and the ever present danger of bombs from enemy aircraft. The very environment was an enemy, fluctuating between searing daytime heat and freezing cold nights on difficult terrain. We are introduced to the difficulties of handling horses, guns and wagons in a war far different to that of the Western Front. The entire campaign is entertainingly recounted including lively accounts of the activities of the Welsh, Scottish and London infantry regiments, the colonial light horsemen and Cameliers together with the long suffering Egyptian labourers who carved camps, fortifications and roads out of the most inhospitable landscape.

When the Germans invaded her small Belgian village in 1914, Marthe Cnockaert's home was burned and her family separated. After getting a job at a German hospital, and winning the Iron Cross for her service to the Reich, she was approached by a neighbor and invited to become an intelligence agent for the British. Not without trepidation, Cnockaert embarked on a career as a spy, providing information and engaging in sabotage before her capture and imprisonment in 1916. After the war, she was paid and decorated by a grateful British government for her service. Cnockaert's is only one of the surprising and gripping stories that comprise Female Intelligence. This is the first history of the female spies who served Britain during World War I, focusing on both the powerful cultural images of these women and the realities, challenges, and contradictions of intelligence service. Between the founding of modern British intelligence organizations in 1909 and the demobilization of 1919, more than 6,000 women served the British government in either civil or military occupations as members of the intelligence community. These women performed a variety of services, and they represented an astonishing diversity of nationality, age, and class. From Aphra Behn, who spied for the British government in the seventeenth century, to the most well known example, Mata Hari, female spies have a long history, existing in juxtaposition to the folkloric notion of women as chatty, gossipy, and indiscreet. Using personal accounts, letters, official documents and newspaper reports, Female Intelligence interrogates different, and apparently contradictory, constructions of gender in the competing spheres of espionage activity.

While we were still in Paris, I felt, and have felt increasingly ever since, that you accepted my guidance and direction on questions with regard to which I had to instruct you only with increasing reluctance.. ..". I must say that it would relieve me of embarrassment, Mr. Secretary, the embarrassment of feeling your reluctance and divergence of judgment, if you would give your present office up and afford me an opportunity to select some one whose mind would more willingly go along with mine." These words are taken from the letter which President Wilson wrote to me on February 11, 1920. On the following day I tendered my resignation as Secretary of State by a letter, in which I said:

Possibly THE book of the tank during the Great War
This is a very substantial and important book. Quite simply, anyone interested in the history of tank warfare should read and own it for it is essential. It was written by a British tank commander of the Great War who has given us a comprehensive account of tanks as machines and tanks at war. First, it is an account of the creation and development of the tank. Second, it describes the war of the tank in all its theatres of operation including the Western Front, the Middle East and including the French and German forces. Third, it provides an insight into armaments, armour, maintenance, breakdown and battle damage recovery and into many aspects of keeping an early armoured squadron operational. Fourth, it offers an excellent history of the engagements of British tanks and, finally, it is a brilliant eyewitness account of the tank of the Great War in action-from one who was personally involved-including much battle description, dialogue and anecdotal incident. A successful book in every way.

The 'Normans' during the Great War in Europe
It would misleading and unfair to the entertainment value and writing ability of the author of this book to describe it as a regimental history. Nothing justifiably so classified began with the expletive, 'Fed up ' Nevertheless, this excellent account takes the reader to the heart of the light infantry regiment raised in Guernsey and from its nearby islands, a regiment of local men who were proud of their independence and their heritage as decedents of the Norman warriors who accompanied Duke William on the conquest of England-the country they all acknowledged as nothing less than their own. Blicq, the author, was one of their number-an ordinary soldier and proud to be one of the worst in the battalion So he predictably brings an element of humour into his graphic portrayal of his comrades and indeed, the text is full of wry period dialogue. Intimate portrait of life on the march, in camp and in the trenches is vividly painted giving the reader a picture of the Guernsey men's experience of life and death on the Western Front. The reader joins Blicq-half of the infamous 'Duo' into battle at Hendecourt, Cambrai, Marcoing, Masnieres through the near catastrophic German onslaught of 1918 to the Passchendaele sector and Doulieu-Estaires. This is a remarkable story of the men of a small island state who loyally and with humour and determination rallied to its call and, in many cases, sacrificed to the last full measure, leaving an appalling legacy of death and injury for the Channel Islands in the post war period. This is an unusual view of a unit at war on the Western Front from original sources and recommended. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.

At the start of the First World War, Arthur Beecroft was a recently qualified barrister in his twenties. Determined to enlist despite a medical condition, he volunteered for military service, first as a regular soldier, then as a despatch rider. Offered a commission in the Royal Engineers, in 1915 he saw action at Gallipoli. Now a byword for catastrophic military disaster, the Gallipoli Campaign was the ill-conceived Allied invasion of the Dardanelles. The campaign stalled almost immediately, resulting in over half a million casualties on both sides. Lucky to survive, several years later Beecroft wrote a detailed memoir of his experiences. Discovered by his granddaughter and now reproduced here almost exactly as it was written nearly a century ago, Beecroft's vivid narrative takes us through those heady days of the declaration of war, enlistment, initial training, the bungled landing at Suvla Bay, and the exceptionally difficult conditions of the Gallipoli terrain. This is no mere jingoistic account. With a keen eye, Beecroft brings to life the men dogged by disease and exhaustion - ordinary soldiers who, even as they suffered the betrayal of incompetent leadership, displayed extraordinary reserves of heroism and bravery. Throughout this rare insight into what it was like for an ordinary 'civilian soldier' swept up in the fog of war, Beecroft's authentic voice still speaks honestly to us today - of comradeship and devotion to duty, of fear and facing death. Now published for the first time in the centenary year of the Gallipoli Campaign, this is a soldier's story in his own words.

World War I was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 1914 to 1918. Contemporaneously known as the Great War or "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. This series of Eight volumes provides year by year analysis of the war that resulted in the death of more than 17 million deaths worldwide.

The Royal Navy strikes back
In the final months of the first year of the First World War a squadron of the Imperial German Navy under von Spee decisively destroyed a weaker British force under Cradock off the coast of South America. This action in the Southern Pacific, known as the Battle of Coronel (after the nearest coastal town in Chile) delivered a decisive blow to the prestige and perception of British sea power and prompted a determined and powerfully resourced retaliatory response from the British Admiralty which would lead to the events described in this book, the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The German cruiser squadron comprised two armoured cruisers, Scharnorst, Gneisenau, three light cruisers, Nurnberg, Dresden and Leipzig plus three auxiliary support vessels. After his Coronel victory, von Spee had sailed his squadron south with the intention of raiding the supply base at Port Stanley in the Falklands in the South Atlantic, when on December 8th, 1914 it was brought to engagement by the avenging stronger British force under Doveton Sturdee comprising the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible, the armoured cruisers Carnarvon, Cornwall and Kent and two light cruisers Bristol and Glasgow. The outcome was perhaps as inevitable as it was intended to be. Only two German vessels escaped being sunk. Students of naval history will know that for a century the Royal Navy's dominance of the seaways had meant that it had fought few major engagements since Trafalgar. The First World War was dominated by the Battle of Jutland. So this account of modern warships in action is of vital interest. Available in softcover and hardback for collectors.