The Dorsetshire Regiment's battle honours include the Indian North West Frontier, the Boer War, Gallipoli, the Western Front, the Normandy Landings, Arnhem, Kohima, Kosovo, Iraq - and as part of the Rifles - Afghanistan. Full accounts of the Dorset Rifle Volunteers, Dorset Yeomanry, Barracks, Forts & Gunsites, the arrival of the tank and build up to D-Day.

This fully-updated book is an authoritative directory of tanks and their immediate derivatives, such as tank destroyers and armoured recovery vehicles. It begins with a history of tank design and evolution from its first action at Flers during World War I and its dominance on the battlefields of Europe in World War II to the powerful fighting machines of the 20th and 21st century seen in more recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. There then follows two directories: 1914-1945 and 1946 to the Present Day. Focusing on some 230 tanks, each entry includes a description and history with a specification panel detailing the tank's crew, weight, dimensions, armament, armour, powerplant and performance. The tanks are wonderfully illustrated with over 650 photographs, many of which are from the famous Tank Museum at Bovington, Dorset, UK, and never previously published in one volume.

Major General Rea Leakey was one of the Royal Tank Regiment's greatest heroes of the Second World War. As a young tank commander, he fought Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Western Desert of Egypt, before becoming trapped for six months in the siege of Tobruk and temporarily joining the Australian infantry as an honorary Lance Corporal. He later returned to the European theatre in 1944 and served as a Churchill tank commander in Normandy, the Rhine and Germany. Despite it being strictly forbidden, Leakey kept a diary throughout his soldiering career. Based on this valuable account, Leakey's Luck documents Leakey's wartime service in its entirety, and offers a view of the war through the eyes of a man who was there at the 'sharp end'. Many of his exploits were hair-raising, some even too fantastic to believe. Incredibly, Leakey's luck held out throughout the war, and he remained in the British Army until retirement in 1968.