The true story of how Britain won the First World War. The popular view of the First World War remains that of BLACKADDER: incompetent generals sending brave soldiers to their deaths. Alan Clark quoted a German general's remark that the British soldiers were 'lions led by donkeys'. But he made it up. Indeed, many established 'facts' about 1914-18 turn out to be myths woven in the 1960s by young historians on the make. Gordon Corrigan's brilliant, witty history reveals how out of touch we have become with the soldiers of 1914-18. They simply would not recognize the way their generation is depicted on TV or in Pat Barker's novels. Laced with dry humour, this will overturn everything you thought you knew about Britain and the First World War. Gordon Corrigan reveals how the British embraced technology, and developed the weapons and tactics to break through the enemy trenches.

Why the British forces fought so badly in World War II and who was to blame Gordon Corrigan's Mud, Blood and Poppycock overturned the myths that surround the First World War. Now he challenges our assumptions about the Second World War in this brilliant, caustic narrative that exposes just how close Britain came to losing. He reveals how Winston Churchill bears a heavy responsibility for the state of our forces in 1939, and how his interference in military operations caused a string of disasters. The reputations of some of our most famous generals are also overturned: above all, Montgomery, whose post-war stature owes more to his skill with a pen than talent for command. But this is not just a story of personalities. Gordon Corrigan investigates how the British, who had the biggest and best army in the world in 1918, managed to forget everything they had learned in just twenty years. The British invented the tank, but in 1940 it was the Germans who showed the world how to use them. After we avoided defeat, but the slimmest of margins, it was a very long haul to defeat Hitler's army, and one in which the Russians would ultimately bear the heaviest burden.

The Hundred Years War was fought between 1337 and 1453 over English claims to both the throne of France by right of inheritance and large parts of the country that had been at one time Norman or, later, English. The fighting ebbed and flowed, but despite their superior tactics and great victories at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the English could never hope to secure their claims in perpetuity: France was wealthier and far more populous, and while the English won the battles, they could not hope to hold forever the lands they conquered. The real and abiding significance of the war lies in the fact that, at its end, the English had become English, as opposed to Anglo-French, and France too had set out on the road to nationhood. (Both countries would subsequently become the very best of enemies.) The war also sparked a real revolution in the English way of waging war, with increasing professionalism and the use of technology to make up for lack of numbers - factors which remain relevant throughout the subsequent history of the English, and then the British, army and which are still critical to it today. Military historian Gordon Corrigan's new history of these epochal events is brisk, combative and refreshingly straightforward, and the great kings, men and battles of the period receive the full attention and reassessment they deserve.

The Duke of Wellington, the most successful of British commanders, set a standard by which all subsequent British generals have been measured. His defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 crowned a reputation first won in India at Assaye and then confirmed during the Peninsular War, where he followed up his defence of Portugal by expelling the French from Spain. Gordon Corrigan, himself an ex-soldier, examines his claims to greatness. Wellington was in many ways the first modern general, combining a mastery of logistics with an ability to communicate and inspire. He had to contend not only with enemy armies, but also with his political masters and an often sceptical public at home.