Foreword by Dan Snow. Ten holders of the Victoria Cross, the highest British military honour - for 'valour in the face of the enemy' - are associated with the Borough of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK. They include the very first VC to be awarded (in the Crimea, 1856).

The authentic description of a glider pilot's experience at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944, from the take-off to his escape. A graphic, detailed, and most absorbing account.

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America - the first African-American to serve in that role - she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Nelson Mandela's comrade in the struggle, Denis Goldberg, spent 22 years in an Apartheid South African political prison from 1963 to 1985. In this memoir, Denis, the perennial optimist, writes about the human side of the often painful road to freedom; about the joy of love and death, human dignity, political passion, comradeship, conflict between comrades...and a very long imprisonment. These memoirs offer the reader an insight into an important chapter in the history of our struggle from a different viewpoint because the racist dogmas of apartheid dictated that he would be incarcerated apart from his Black comrades and colleagues. That segregation denied him both the companionship and the counsel of his fellow accused. His was consequently an exceedingly lonely sojourn. But, true to himself and the cause he had espoused from his youth, he bore it with courage and immense dignity.

'A required book for anyone who wishes to understand the Argentine situation before and after the Falklands War' GRAHAM GREENE Jimmy Burns was the only full-time British foreign correspondent to remain in Argentina covering the Falklands War. In The Land that Lost Its Heroes, he gives a detailed account of the military planning of the invasion, exposing not only the hidden motives and nature of Argentina's military regime, but also the pitifully inadequate reactions of both British diplomacy and intelligence. Burns exposes the duplicity of other Western nations and the international banking community and gives a vivid first-hand account of the end of the regime, the debt crisis and the return to democracy under Raul Alfonsin.

The story of this tragic loss, New Zealand's worst military disaster, has not been told fully - until now In the annals of military history, the World War I battle of Passchendaele is recorded as New Zealand's worst military disaster. In just a few short hours on a miserable Belgian morning over 1000 New Zealand soldiers were killed and a further 2000 wounded in an attack on the Germanfront line. In Massacre at Passchendaele, Glyn Harper brings this ill-fated battle to life. The background to the situation facing the Allies in October 1917 is outlined, and the first assault on Passchendaele is described. This near-perfect military operation brought the New Zealand soldiers much acclaim; however, the second attack, on 12 October 1917, was anything but successful. The rationale of the strategists, the concern of some officers and the desperation of the fighting man are all recorded here. Judicious use of diary extracts and recorded interviews transport the reader to the centre of this harrowing event. An appendix lists the names and details of the New Zealand soldiers killed at Passchendaele, a tribute to their sacrifice. The military disaster of Passchendaele was a pivotal event in New Zealand's history, and a key influence on our attitudes to war in the following decades. This book will help ensure that it remains an untold story no longer.

The years of National Service cover almost two decades from 1945 to 1963. During that time 2.5 million young men were compelled to do their time in National Service with 6,000 being called up every fortnight. Some went willingly while others were reluctant. A few were downright bloody-minded as they saw little difference between their call up and the press gangs of Britain's distant past. At first public opinion was behind the idea of peacetime conscription or national service as they call it. It was clear in the immediate post war political landscape that Britain had considerable obligations and only a limited number of men still in service. Overnight the national servicemen had to learn a new language. !Fatigues!, 'Blanco', 'spit n polish', 'rifle oil', 'pull throughs' and the dreaded 'bull' and 'jankers'. Once they had been shaved from the scalp and kitted out all within a few hours of arrival, the rookie National Servicemen all looked identical even if back in the barrack room every man was still an individual. The arena for the breaking in of these young men was the parade ground. In squads they learnt how to obey orders instinctively and to react to a single word of command by coping with a torrent of abuse from the drill Instructors. After basic training the raw recruits would be turned into soldiers, sailors and airmen and they would be posted to join regiments at home or abroad. Nearly 400 national servicemen would die for their country in war zones like Korea and Malaya. Others took part in atomic tests on Christmas Island or were even used as human guinea pigs for germ warfare tests. There are tragic stories also of young men who simply couldn't cope with military life and the pain of separation from their families. For some suicide was the only way out.

'From School to Landing Craft' describes the period 1939 to 1947 for one man, age 17 at the outbreak of war, from two perspectives. First, there is a factual account of his time in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). Secondly, there is an account based on extracts of letters between him, his family and friends. These letters illuminate his transition from a comfortable middle class upbringing in the London suburbs and at boarding school to the deprivations and uncertainties of war. They provide a first hand account, sometimes filtered by the naval censor, of family and friends dealing with life-threatening circumstances. The expectations and fears of anxious parents stand juxtaposed with mundane 'everyday life' at home and in contrast to the resilient adaptability of youth.

Over 16 million copies sold worldwide 'One of the most remarkable books I have ever read' Susan Jeffers One of the outstanding classics to emerge from the Holocaust, Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's story of his struggle for survival in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Today, this remarkable tribute to hope offers us an avenue to finding greater meaning and purpose in our own lives.

The extraordinary untold story of Ernest Hemingway's dangerous secret life in espionage A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A finalist for the William E. Colby Military Writers' Award "IMPORTANT" (Wall Street Journal) - "FASCINATING" (New York Review of Books) - "CAPTIVATING" (Missourian) A riveting international cloak-and-dagger epic ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the liberation of Western Europe, wartime China, the Red Scare of Cold War America, and the Cuban Revolution, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy reveals for the first time Ernest Hemingway's secret adventures in espionage and intelligence during the 1930s and 1940s (including his role as a Soviet agent code-named "Argo"), a hidden chapter that fueled both his art and his undoing. While he was the historian at the esteemed CIA Museum, Nicholas Reynolds, a longtime American intelligence officer, former U.S. Marine colonel, and Oxford-trained historian, began to uncover clues suggesting Nobel Prize-winning novelist Ernest Hemingway was deeply involved in mid-twentieth-century spycraft -- a mysterious and shocking relationship that was far more complex, sustained, and fraught with risks than has ever been previously supposed. Now Reynolds's meticulously researched and captivating narrative "looks among the shadows and finds a Hemingway not seen before" (London Review of Books), revealing for the first time the whole story of this hidden side of Hemingway's life: his troubling recruitment by Soviet spies to work with the NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB, followed in short order by a complex set of secret relationships with American agencies. Starting with Hemingway's sympathy to antifascist forces during the 1930s, Reynolds illuminates Hemingway's immersion in the life-and-death world of the revolutionary left, from his passionate commitment to the Spanish Republic; his successful pursuit by Soviet NKVD agents, who valued Hemingway's influence, access, and mobility; his wartime meeting in East Asia with communist leader Chou En-Lai, the future premier of the People's Republic of China; and finally to his undercover involvement with Cuban rebels in the late 1950s and his sympathy for Fidel Castro. Reynolds equally explores Hemingway's participation in various roles as an agent for the United States government, including hunting Nazi submarines with ONI-supplied munitions in the Caribbean on his boat, Pilar; his command of an informant ring in Cuba called the "Crook Factory" that reported to the American embassy in Havana; and his on-the-ground role in Europe, where he helped OSS gain key tactical intelligence for the liberation of Paris and fought alongside the U.S. infantry in the bloody endgame of World War II. As he examines the links between Hemingway's work as an operative and as an author, Reynolds reveals how Hemingway's secret adventures influenced his literary output and contributed to the writer's block and mental decline (including paranoia) that plagued him during the postwar years -- a period marked by the Red Scare and McCarthy hearings. Reynolds also illuminates how those same experiences played a role in some of Hemingway's greatest works, including For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, while also adding to the burden that he carried at the end of his life and perhaps contributing to his suicide. A literary biography with the soul of an espionage thriller, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy is an essential contribution to our understanding of the life, work, and fate of one of America's most legendary authors.

This highly praised study traces the province's history from partition in 1921 to today's peace process. Widely acknowledged as the best informed academic observers of Northern Irish politics, the authors look behind the handshakes on the White House lawn and provide a fascinating insight into history as it unfolds in the headlines and on news bulletins.

It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle. Now Max Hastings, preeminent military historian takes us back to the bloody bitter struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950. Using personal accounts from interviews with more than 200 vets -- including the Chinese -- Hastings follows real officers and soldiers through the battles. He brilliantly captures the Cold War crisis at home -- the strategies and politics of Truman, Acheson, Marshall, MacArthur, Ridgway, and Bradley -- and shows what we should have learned in the war that was the prelude to Vietnam.

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War - organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. How these three men came together - along with the partisans - to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les's capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.

Exam board: OCR Level: AS/A-level Subject: History First teaching: September 2015 First exams: Summer 2016 (AS); Summer 2017 (A-level) Put your trust in the textbook series that has given thousands of A-level History students deeper knowledge and better grades for over 30 years. Updated to meet the demands of today's A-level specifications, this new generation of Access to History titles includes accurate exam guidance based on examiners' reports, free online activity worksheets and contextual information that underpins students' understanding of the period. - Develop strong historical knowledge: in-depth analysis of each topic is both authoritative and accessible - Build historical skills and understanding: downloadable activity worksheets can be used independently by students or edited by teachers for classwork and homework - Learn, remember and connect important events and people: an introduction to the period, summary diagrams, timelines and links to additional online resources support lessons, revision and coursework - Achieve exam success: practical advice matched to the requirements of your A-level specification incorporates the lessons learnt from previous exams - Engage with sources, interpretations and the latest historical research: students will evaluate a rich collection of visual and written materials, plus key debates that examine the views of different historians

The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, dazzled with its new rainbow-colored electric lights. It showcased an array of wonders, like daredevils attempting to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or the "Animal King" putting the smallest woman in the world and also terrifying animals on display. But the thrill-seeking spectators little suspected that an assassin walked the fairgrounds, waiting for President William McKinley to arrive. In Margaret Creighton's hands, the result is "a persuasive case that the fair was a microcosm of some momentous facets of the United States, good and bad, at the onset of the American Century" (Howard Schneider, Wall Street Journal).

A reporter's vivid account of Central Asia's wild recent history-violent in the extreme and rife with characters both heroic and corrup It sounds like the stuff of a fiction thriller: two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling highway, brazen corruption schemes, contract hits, and larger-than-life characters who may be villains . . . or heroes . . . or possibly both. Yet this book is not a work of fiction. It is instead a gripping, firsthand account of Central Asia's unfolding history from 2005 to the present. Philip Shishkin, a prize-winning journalist with extensive on-the-ground experience in the tumultuous region above Afghanistan's northern border, focuses mainly on Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Both nations have struggled with the enormous challenges of post-Soviet independent statehood; both became entangled in America's Afghan campaign when U.S. military bases were established within their borders. At the same time, the region was developing into a key smuggling hub for Afghanistan's booming heroin trade. Through the eyes of local participants-the powerful and the powerless-Shishkin reconstructs how Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have ricocheted between extreme repression and democratic strivings, how alliances with the United States and Russia have brought mixed blessings, and how Stalin's legacy of ethnic gerrymandering incites conflict even now.

'Irresistible . . . My aviation title of the year' Rowland White 'Stupendously brilliant . . . Completely addictive' James Holland 'The most explosive book about aircraft ever' Jim Moir, aka Vic Reeves From the terror and exhilaration of First World War dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to that most brutally exciting of machines: the warplane. The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly illustrated collection of the very best articles from Hush-Kit - the world's leading alternative aviation online magazine - combined with a heavy punch of new and exclusive pieces. It contains a wealth of brilliant material, from Top 10 lists and historical deep-dives to interviews with legendary fighter pilots and expert analysis of weapons, tactics and technology. This knowledge and impeccable research is balanced throughout with the irreverent attitude, wicked satire and sharp eye for the absurdities of the aeronautical world that have made the magazine so popular with its readers. The book itself is also a stunning object, featuring first-rate photography alongside original, specially commissioned artwork. Inside it you will find: Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, the Mirage, the MiG-25, the English Electric Lightning, the Rafale and the B-52 among others. Comprehensive surveys including 'The Ultimate Biplane Fighters', '10 Incredible Cancelled Military Aircraft' and 'Aviation Myths You Shouldn't Believe'. Fascinating insights into obscure and overlooked warplanes. Unbelievable accounts of the most bizarre moments in aviation history. And much, much more.