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.

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.

When HMS Laurentic sank in 1917, few knew what cargo she was carrying, and the Admiralty wanted to keep it that way. After all, broadcasting that there were 44 tons of gold off the coast of Ireland in the middle of a vicious and bloody war was not the best strategic move. But Britain desperately needed that gold. Lieutenant Commander Guybon Damant was an expert diver and helped discover how to prevent decompression sickness ('the bends'). With a then world record dive of 210ft under his belt and a proven history of military determination, Damant was the perfect man for a job that required the utmost secrecy and skill. What followed next was a tale of incredible feats, set against a backdrop of war and treacherous storms. Based on thousands of Admiralty pages, interviews with Damant's family and the unpublished memoirs of the man himself, The Sunken Gold is a story of war, treasure - and one man's obsession to find it.

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.

This book provides a historical narrative to tell the story of interwar German reparations the debates, controversies and diplomacy surrounding the issue from the 1919 Paris peace conference to the abandonment of reparations at the Lausanne Conference in 1932.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Organised chronologically by type, German Aircraft of World War I offers a highly-illustrated guide to the main types of aircraft used by the German Air Force during World War I. The book offers a comprehensive survey of German aircraft, from the Albatros B.1 and Fokker E.II of the early years, to the more sophisticated Fokker D.VII and Junkers CL.1 of the final months of the war. All the major and many minor types are featured, including monoplanes, biplanes, single-seater fighters, two-seater fighters, bombers, ground attack aircraft, night bombers, giant bombers and floatplanes. This includes both well-known and lesser- known models, such as the LVG and Pfalz single-seater fighters, the Gotha and Zeppelin Staaken large bombers, AEG ground attack aircraft, and the Albatross, Halberstadt and Brandenburg two-seater biplanes. Each featured profile includes authentic markings and colour schemes, while every separate model is accompanied by exhaustive specifications. Packed with 110 full-colour artworks with detailed specifications, German Aircraft of World War I is a key reference guide for military modellers and World War I enthusiasts.

" ... the student of the Great War and gender is well served, and Braybon's introduction provides an excellent overview of the various historiographical themes, whilst her footnotes provide a useful guide to further reading."? - History "Readers will not be disappointed by this scholarly, yet accessible, collection of essays."? - Centre for First World War Studies In the English-speaking world the Great War maintains a tenacious grip on the public imagination, and also continues to draw historians to an event which has been interpreted variously as a symbol of modernity, the midwife to the twentieth century and an agent of social change. Although much 'common knowledge' about the war and its aftermath has included myth, simplification and generalisation, this has often been accepted uncritically by popular and academic writers alike. While Britain may have suffered a surfeit of war books, many telling much the same story, there is far less written about the impact of the Great War in other combatant nations. Its history was long suppressed in both fascist Italy and the communist Soviet Union: only recently have historians of Russia begun to examine a conflict which killed, maimed and displaced so many millions. Even in France and Germany the experience of 1914-18 has often been overshadowed by the Second World War. The war's social history is now ripe for reassessment and revision. The essays in this volume incorporate a European perspective, engage with the historiography of the war, and consider how the primary textural, oral and pictorial evidence has been used - or abused. Subjects include the politics of shellshock, the impact of war on women, the plight of refugees, food distribution in Berlin and portrait photography, all of which illuminate key debates in war history. Gail Braybon is an independent historian. She is the author of Women Workers in the First World War and also wrote, with Penny Summerfield, Out of the Cage: Women's Experiences in Two World Wars.

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.

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 British cultural history of the Gallipoli campaign has been overlooked until now - this is a significant book as it offers the first real opportunity for this important campaign to be included in undergraduate courses on WWI. The commemoration of war is a particularly vibrant area of study - Anzac Day, commemorating the landings that began the Gallipoli campaign, is central to Australian national consciousness and this book examines why. A crucial argument in the cultural history of the First World War was sparked by Paul Fussell's contention that the war signified a profound cultural rupture; in widening the debate from the Western Front, this book supports the counter argument that romantic modes of expression retained resonance and utility. In Australia, the renewal of the story of Gallipoli by historians and film-makers (notably Peter Weir's 1981 film starring Mel Gibson) has profoundly altered the national sense of identity and society's perceptions of the armed forces; the authors explains how the writing of this particular event has developed and achieved this central position. An essential volume for those interested in British military and Australian history, postcolonialism and nation building, from academics and students through to the general reader. -- .

The true and extraordinary story of the satirical newspaper created in the mud and mayhem of the Somme, interspersed with comic sketches and spoofs from the vivid imagination of those on the front line. In a bombed out building during the First World War in the French town of Ypres (mispronounced Wipers by British soldiers), two officers discover a printing press and create a newspaper for the troops. Far from being a sombre journal about life in the trenches, they produced a resolutely cheerful, subversive and very funny newspaper designed to lift the spirits of the men on the front line.

In the English-speaking world the Great War maintains a tenacious grip on the public imagination, and also continues to draw historians to an event which has been interpreted variously as a symbol of modernity, the midwife to the twentieth century and an agent of social change. Although much 'common knowledge' about the war and its aftermath has included myth, simplification and generalisation, this has often been accepted uncritically by popular and academic writers alike. While Britain may have suffered a surfeit of war books, many telling much the same story, there is far less written about the impact of the Great War in other combatant nations. Its history was long suppressed in both fascist Italy and the communist Soviet Union: only recently have historians of Russia begun to examine a conflict which killed, maimed and displaced so many millions. Even in France and Germany the experience of 1914-18 has often been overshadowed by the Second World War. The war's social history is now ripe for reassessment and revision. The essays in this volume incorporate a European perspective, engage with the historiography of the war, and consider how the primary textural, oral and pictorial evidence has been used - or abused. Subjects include the politics of shellshock, the impact of war on women, the plight of refugees, food distribution in Berlin and portrait photography, all of which illuminate key debates in war history.