With an Introduction by Angus Calder. As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and 1926, tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in the Middle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge and ends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' in Damascus. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is no Boys Own Paper tale of Imperial triumph, but a complex work of high literary aspiration which stands in the tradition of Melville and Dostoevsky, and alongside the writings of Yeats, Eliot and Joyce.

The Edinburgh of Angus Calder's poems is not the city of summer tourism and landmark buildings. It is the all-the-year-round arena of lingering mists or brilliant sunlight on grey stone, where seagulls and pigeons command the early-morning streets, curlers sweep their ice at Murrayfield and coarse sportsmen revel on the Meadows.

The 3 Estaites is - by common consent - Scotland's greatest play. First performed in Cupar, Fife in June 1552, it is the earliest Scottish play to have survived. Full of broad humour and pantomime-like farce, it also deals with dangerous topical issues, hitting out at corruption and hypocrisy in the ruling establishment, denouncing the oppression of the poor and calling for social "reformation". A young king is rescued from idle sexual dalliance and false counsels by Divine Correction and they preside over a Parliament summoned to enact just laws, where basic Christian tenets and values are affirmed - but Folly has the last word. In 2000 The 3 Estaites gained a fresh resonance when it celebrated both the Millennium and the rebirth of Scotland's Parliament by returning to Cupar for the first time in nearly four and a half centuries. This contemporary Scots version by the leading poet and playwright Alan Spence retains the structure and spirit of Lindsay's script while giving his language a new lease of life. The play's topical allusions have been updated brilliantly, but Lindsay's generous spirit and enormous sense of fun have been preserved. This is a national drama, expressing a comprehensive perspective of what Scotland is and what it might be - a land of justice, fellow-feeling and laughter.

From the clash of steel to the rumble of tanks, the sights and sounds of war have inspired poets of every nation since conflict was invented. In this timely new anthology, respected poet and historian Angus Calder and anti-war activist Beth Junor have drawn together a representation of war poetry from nations and cultures across the globe. Shared experience and powerful imagery combine to give this collection of poems an immediacy and poignancy that illustrate both the borror and the humanity that are distilled by the events that humankind calls war.

Waugh’s own unhappy experience of being a soldier is superbly re-enacted in this story of Guy Crouchback, a Catholic and a gentleman, commissioned into the Royal Corps of Halberdiers during the war years 1939–45. High comedy – in the company of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook or the denizens of Bellamy’s Club – is only part of the shambles of Crouchback’s war. When action comes in Crete and in Yugoslavia, he discovers not heroism, but humanity.

Sword of Honour combines three volumes: Officers and Gentlemen, Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender, which were originally published separately. Extensively revised by Waugh, they were published as the one-volume Sword of Honour in 1965, in the form in which Waugh himself wished them to be read.

Evelyn Waugh's masterful depiction of World War II, now in a beautiful hardback edition with a new Introduction by Martin Stannard Waugh's own unhappy experience of being a soldier is superbly re-enacted in this story of Guy Crouchback, a Catholic and a gentleman, commissioned into the Royal Corps of Halberdiers during the war years 1939-45. High comedy - in the company of Brigadier Ritchie-Hook or the denizens of Bellamy's Club - is only part of the shambles of Crouchback's war. When action comes in Crete and in Yugoslavia, he discovers not heroism, but humanity. Sword of Honour combines three volumes: Officers and Gentlemen, Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender, which were originally published separately. Extensively revised by Waugh, they were published as the one-volume Sword of Honour in 1965, in the form in which Waugh himself wished them to be read. 'Marvellous ... one of the masterpieces of the century' John Banville, Irish Times

The Myth of the Blitz was nurtured at every level of society. It rested on the assumed invincibility of an island race distinguished by good humour, understatement and the ability to pluck victory from the jaws of defeat by team work, improvisation and muddling through. In fact, in many ways, the Blitz was not like that. Sixty-thousand people were conscientious objectors; Churchill and the royal family were booed while touring the aftermath of air raids; Britain was not bombed into classless society. Angus Calder provides a compelling examination of the events of 1940 and 1941 and of the myth which sustained Britain's 'finest hour'.

'The best social history of the Second World War.' Sunday Telegraph. The 1939-45 conflict was, for Britain, a 'total war': no section of society remained untouched by military conscription, air raids, the shipping crisis and the war economy. In this comprehensive and engrossing narrative, Angus Calder presents not only the great events and the leading figures but also the oddities and banalities of daily life, and in particular the parts played by ordinary people: air raid wardens and Home Guards, factory workers and farmers, housewives and pacifists. Above all, this book reveals how, in those six years, the British people came closer to discarding their social conventions than at any time since Cromwell's republic.