The George Medal, along with the George Cross, was instituted by His Majesty King George VI on 24th September 1940. His desire, that the many acts of bravery being performed on home soil, in a type of warfare never experienced before, and primarily by civilians for whom military awards were inappropriate, was the driving force behind their creation.The medal has been awarded to civilians and military personnel over the past 75 years, all of whose names are contained within this register.Never before has a register of the George Medal been produced that presents the information behind the awards. It stands as a testament to the selfless acts performed by the men and women within its pages.

This is the second volume, but the last to be published of a trilogy - the other volumes being Smashing the Atlantic Wall and The Battle of the Bulge. Monty's Rhine Adventure begins immediately after the Normandy invasion with the euphoria surrounding the belief that the war would soon be won. However, it was not to be as easy Monty hoped. The book covers the difficult next few months as the Allies slogged through France and Belgium fighting stern and skilled Nazi resistance. However, the centrepiece of Monty's Rhine Adventure is Operation Market garden - Monty's bold plan to cut through the German defences via the eight bridges which spanned the Dutch/German border. The book deals with the plan, its execution and its aftermath in rigorous detail. Had Market Garden gone to plan, it might have led to the overall defeat of the Third Reich before the end of 1944. As it was, it was the Russians that entered Berlin first in May 1945. Nonetheless, this period remains one of the boldest and most exciting of the Second World War.

Key title in the new Uniform Legends series. Up close and personal accounts of pilots who were there, first written in the 1960's when many of the surviving British and German airmen were in or entering their middle years

Wonderful account of one of the top Battle of Britain fighter pilots. Written by one of the foremost military aviation authors who was an RAF Officer himself and personally knew Lacey.

The end of the Second World War led to the United States' emergence as a global superpower. For war-ravaged Western Europe it marked the beginning of decades of unprecedented cooperation and prosperity that one historian has labeled "the long peace". Yet half a world away, in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea and Malaya-the fighting never really stopped, as these regions sought to completely sever the yoke of imperialism and colonialism with all-too-violent consequences. East and Southeast Asia quickly became the most turbulent regions of the globe. Within weeks of the famous surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri, civil war, communal clashes and insurgency engulfed the continent, from Southeast Asia to the Soviet border. By early 1947, full-scale wars were raging in China, Indonesia and Vietnam, with growing guerrilla conflicts in Korea and Malaya. Within a decade after the Japanese surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East and Southeast Asia that had formerly been conquests of the Japanese or colonies of the European powers experienced wars and upheavals that resulted in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of civilians. With A Continent Erupts, acclaimed military historian Ronald H. Spector draws on letters, diaries and international archives to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive military history and analysis of these little-known but decisive events. Far from being simply offshoots of the Cold War, as they have often been portrayed, these shockingly violent conflicts forever changed the shape of Asia, and the world as we know it today.

The story of Napoleon and Betsy Balcombe is an unusual and fascinating tale. A fallen Emperor who once controlled most of Europe makes friends with an impudent, pretty and spirited young English girl, just about the celebrate her thirteenth birthday. Betsy produced a book full of interest, but notwithstanding that the book wanders backwards and forward chronologically, the general tenor of the relationship between this young girl and Napoleon is beyond question, and it was of an unusual and extremely friendly nature. Napoleon's fall from an unprecedented position of power to humiliating confinement must have been an impossible burden to have lived with, and yet, despite this - or possibly because of it - Napoleon befriended this child and held genuine affection for her. Despite the naivety, the warmth of the friendship between the ex-emperor and little 'Mees' Balcombe shines through, and her text is well-worth providing in this new edition. Napoleon was at the Briars for eight weeks, but the family were very close to the community at Longwood, some two miles further up hill and inland, and visited weekly, sometimes more often.It was here, as Betsy matured and grew more responsible, that the friendship developed, to the extent that she assisted Napoleon with his attempts at English. She was daring as well as impudent and with an irrepressible sense of humour she unlocked the inner child in Napoleon that led to the famous friendship. He found her boldness amusing and occasionally alarming. It must have been a welcome diversion from his darker thoughts.

NOT ONLY... beer in Berlin, absinthe in Prague, baths in Budapest, Dracula in Transylvania, trenches in Gallipoli, a plethora of Greco-Roman ruins, fairy chimneys in Capadocia, lost cities, souks and castles in Syria, angry Kurds, absent Armenians, Mounts Nemrut and Ararat, depressed in Iran, harassed in the Stans, filthy Chinese food and filthier loos, the Wall and the Warriors... BUT ALSO... a lost car in Calcutta, road rage in India, charred corpses in Nepal, Everest in Tibet, the Potala Palace, chanting monks, appalling roads, disgusting food, unspeakable bogs, magical Mount Kailash, mayhem in the Stans, Stalingrad, Crimea, the Light Brigade, Auschwitz and in Bruges... "Every traveller should make it his life's work to leave Swindon... few go to such extremes..." Dom Joly. "Lies, it's all lies..." Chairman Mao. The author is an Old Etonian, Cambridge graduate, retired investment banker and completely unrepentant.