The story of a modern centurion: Tom Cobley's excellent and comprehensive account of his 40 years of service has much to tell the reader. His service took him from Australia and the Pacific Islands, to Britain and Northern Ireland, to the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, and places in between. In different regiments of two armies, often alongside men from other armies, he served on operations in many theatres. He tells of service life, the training, comradeship and preparation for operations; his insights show what it is really like. He tells of command and staff work on operations. And above all we learn of Tom Cobley, the centurion himself. General Sir Rupert Smith KCB, DSO*, OBE, QGM (DSACEUR 1998-2001) Although I have served with the Parachute Regiment for close to 40 years, I only got to know Colonel Tom Cobley later in his career. When he was in Afghanistan I was the UK Chief of Joint Operations (CJO), with operational responsibility for our forces there. Subsequently I saw him in Iraq, first as CJO and later as the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR), when visiting the NATO training mission. Finally, he worked in my EU strategic level Headquarters at Mons, whilst I had command of the EU operation in Bosnia. It is my experience that you find the best soldiers wherever there is an operation; the same faces always turn up where the action is. Tom is no exception and his account of his fascinating and varied career is well worth reading. General Sir John Reith KCB, CBE (DSACEUR 2004-2007)

Defence managers, like their counterparts in both the public and private sector need to learn to cope with change and the resulting uncertainty. This is no easy task for uncertain situations meaning that there are no sure answers or solutions. This volume represents the attempts of its contributors, military and academic, to assist in the process. To some extent uncertainty is nothing new, indeed it may be the only certainty in an era of rapid social change, increasing economic pressures. The end of the Cold War, a rise in global terrorism and rapid developments in informatics have accelerated the pace of change. Tried and trusted techniques that served well in the past are no longer appropriate in an era where defence services must be ready to challenge unknown adversaries, accept a range of responsibilities in operations other than war, and where even fundamental social values are being changed and challenged. This volume maintains a practical focus by offering contributions from serving officers as well as academics. Subjects covered range from the broad context of international affairs since 11 September 2001, to the finer detail of maintaining a proper work-life balance for se

'This is the room from which I will direct the war,' Churchill declared, shortly after becoming Prime Minister in 1940. It was from these cramped confines that Churchill turned a seemingly inevitable defeat at the hands of the Nazis into a famous victory. Built in 1938 as a temporary refuge in case of air raid attack, this secret bunker became a second home to Churchill - and to large numbers of military personnel and civil servants whose work until now has been largely unsung. Drawing on a fascinating range of original material, including newly available first-hand accounts of the people who lived there, Holmes reveals how and why the bunker and its war machine developed; how the inhabitants' lives were transformed; and how their work led to victory. Elegant and illuminating, Churchill's Bunker is a unique exploration of one of the most important sites in British history.

The Gothic tradition continues to excite the popular imagination. John C. Tibbetts presents interviews and conversations with prominent novelists, filmmakers, artists, and film and television directors and actors as they trace the Gothic mode across three centuries, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, through H.P. Lovecraft, to today's science fiction, goth, and steampunk culture. H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Robert (Psycho) Bloch, Chris (The Polar Express) Van Allsburg, Maurice Sendak, Gahan Wilson, Ray Harryhausen, Christopher Reeve, Greg Bear, William Shatner, and many more share their worlds of imagination and terror.

This fascinating book tells the stories of the most dramatic, memorable, and important conflicts in world history, from Agincourt, Lepanto, and Trafalgar, to Gettysburg, Stalingrad, and the Somme. It begins with the battle of Megiddo fought by the ancient Egyptians and takes the reader through to the Second Gulf War of 2003. On the way it encompasses almost 300 battles from around the world - from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, to Europe and the Americas.

Amit Gupta directs this adaptation of Owen Sheers' debut novel starring Andrea Riseborough and Michael Sheen. It's 1944 and D-Day has failed. The United Kingdom is now under Nazi occupation. In the remote Welsh village of Olchon, farmer's wife Sarah Lewis (Riseborough) wakes up one morning to find her husband has mysteriously disappeared along with all the other men in the village. Then, as they wait for news, a German patrol arrives in their valley on an undisclosed mission. During the harsh winter that follows, the two groups are forced to pull together to survive the last days of the war. Cut off from the conflict around them, both the villagers and the Nazis find the lines between collaboration, duty, occupation and survival becoming less defined as time goes on...

James Arbuckle (c.1700-1742), poet and essayist, was born in Belfast to a Presbyterian merchant family of Scottish origin and educated at Glasgow University (1717-1723). In Glasgow, his poetry, influenced by Pope and the Latin classics, won praise from leading members of Scotland's literary and political establishment, including Allan Ramsay. In 1723 he moved to Dublin, producing under the name "Hibernicus" Ireland's first literary journal, in collaboration with a group of young Whig intellectuals forming the "Molesworth circle". He aimed at first to avoid politics, but in the highly politicized Dublin of Dean Swift that proved impossible. He was satirized by members of Swift's circle and responded with the ironic Panegyric on the Rev Dean Swift. His later work, especially The Tribune, developed a radical and anticlerical critique of contemporary Ireland, in which Swift was represented more as Church Tory than Irish patriot. Arbuckle was well-known in his day, but his work has not been published since the end of the eighteenth century. He has often been discussed in modern scholarly work across a range of disciplines: on Swift and Pope; Scottish poetry and especially Allan Ramsay; Francis Hutcheson and the early Scottish Enlightenment; the background to the United Irishmen of 1798; the history of Irish presbyterians. Arbuckle himself has not been the focus of detailed scholarly inquiry until now. This edition presents an annotated selection of Arbuckle's work in poetry and prose. It begins with a substantial introduction dealing with his biography and political and literary context. It is then divided into three parts. The first, on his Scottish period, includes the annotated texts of his two principal poems, Snuff and Glotta. The second presents a selection of the "Hibernicus" essays, grouped by four themes: literary (which will include a selection of his Horace translations); philosophical (responding principally to Francis Hutcheson); political (placing him in the contemporary varieties of Whiggism, and especially the dispute between Walpole and "Opposition" Whigs); religious (the focus here is on his writing on toleration). The final section deals with his response to Swift's Irish writing, as demonstrated in selected essays from The Tribune and in A Panegyric.

D-Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history, took place on 6 June 1944. The subsequent battle of Normandy involved over a million men, and helped seal the fate of The Third Reich. This is a graphic account of the planning and execution of Operation Overlord, as well as the campaign which effectively destroyed the German forces in France, opening the way for the Allied advance. Including a wealth of superb photographs and maps, the book also contains 10 facsimile items of rare memorabilia, including diaries, letters and memos. This title includes top-secret hand-drawn map showing the minute-by-minute position on the way in to the drop zone just west of Ste-Mere-Eglise for elements of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. This is an extract from the pocket diary of Sergeant G.E. Hughes, then a corporal, landed with the 1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment at Arromanches.

It has been widely believed that psychology in Germany, faced with political antipathy and mass emigration of its leading minds, withered under national Socialism. Yet in The Professionalisation of Psychology in Nazi Germany Ulfried Geuter tells a radically different story of how German psychology, rather than disappearing, rapidly grew into a fully developed profession during the Third Reich. Geuter makes it clear that the rising demands of a modern industrial nation gearing up for a war afforded psychology with a unique opportunity in Nazi Germany: to transform itself from a marginal academic discipline into a state-sanctioned profession. This opportunity was mainly presented by Wehrmacht, whose demand for psychological expertise led to increasing support for academic departments, and to the expansion and standardisation of training programmes - a process of professionalization which culminated in 1941 with the creation of a state examination for Diplom, a professional psychology degree. Although the Wehrmacht's demand for its services fell along with the fortunes of the Nazi regime, the professional base psychology has carved for itself remained for the duration of the war and to this date.

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Richard Holmes's dazzling portrait of the age of great scientific discovery is a groundbreaking achievement. The book opens with Joseph Banks, botanist on Captain Cook's first Endeavour voyage, who stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769 fully expecting to have located Paradise. Back in Britain, the same Romantic revolution that had inspired Banks was spurring other great thinkers on to their own voyages of artistic and scientific discovery - astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical - that together made up the 'age of wonder'. In this breathtaking group biography, Richard Holmes tells the stories of the period's celebrated innovators and their great scientific discoveries: from telescopic sight to the miner's lamp, and from the first balloon flight to African exploration.

Defence managers, like their counterparts in both the public and private sector need to learn to cope with change and the resulting uncertainty. This is no easy task for uncertain situations meaning that there are no sure answers or solutions. This volume represents the attempts of its contributors, military and academic, to assist in the process. To some extent uncertainty is nothing new, indeed it may be the only certainty in an era of rapid social change, increasing economic pressures. The end of the Cold War, a rise in global terrorism and rapid developments in informatics have accelerated the pace of change. Tried and trusted techniques that served well in the past are no longer appropriate in an era where defence services must be ready to challenge unknown adversaries, accept a range of responsibilities in operations other than war, and where even fundamental social values are being changed and challenged. This volume maintains a practical focus by offering contributions from serving officers as well as academics. Subjects covered range from the broad context of international affairs since 11 September 2001, to the finer detail of maintaining a proper work-life balance for se

Human Resource Management in the British Armed Forces continues to grow in importance. A great deal of emphasis has now been placed on people issues and these will grow in importance, particularly for the services, as the full effects of the Human Rights Act 1998 and implications of the Macpherson Report begin to hit home.

'A masterly performance by the greatest literary biographer of his generation' Oldie In this kaleidoscope of stories spanning art, science and poetry, award-winning writer Richard Holmes travels across three centuries, through much of Europe and into the lively company of many earlier biographers. Central to this pursuit is a powerful evocation of the lives of women both scientific and literary, some well-known and others almost lost: Margaret Cavendish, Mary Somerville, Germaine de Stael, Mary Wollstonecraft and Zelide. He investigates the love-stunned John Keats, the waterlogged Percy Bysshe Shelley, the chocolate-box painter Thomas Lawrence, the opium-soaked genius Coleridge, and the mad-visionary bard William Blake. The diversity of Holmes's material is testimony to his empathy, erudition and at times his mischievous streak. This is his most personal and seductive writing yet.

"Redcoat is the story of the British soldier from the Seven Year War through to the Mutiny and the Crimea. It is consistently entertaining, full of brilliantly chosen anecdotes, and rattles along at a good light infantry pace."
DAVID CRANE, 'Spectator' Books of the Year

"It would be hard to exaggerate the excellence of this book. It is vivid, comprehensive, well written, pacy, colourful, and above all, highly informative. The author has a command of his subject of Wellingtonian proportions, and his enthusiasm communicates itself to the reader on every page."
SIMON HEFFER, 'Literary Review'

"A wonderful book, full of anecdote and good sense. Anyone who has enjoyed a Sharpe story will love it."
BERNARD CORNWELL, 'Daily Mail'

"All the best-known soldier writers are discussed here, and their anecdotes are told with enthusiasm and aplomb…This is an army from another world, and 'Redcoat' is a splendidly entertaining, moving and informative description of its strengths and foibles."
HEW STRACHAN, 'Daily Telegraph'

"Beautifully written, 'Redcoat' is a vivid account of squalor and suffering almost beyond belief, for the men, their wives and camp followers, and their horses. One of the best chapters is a description of barrack-room life that will turn a few stomachs in this more fastidious age."
JOHN CANNON, 'Times Literary Supplement'

A fantastic reissue of Richard Holmes' epic biography of this most enigmatic and intriguing of the Romantic poets. This is simply one of the greatest biographical achievements of recent years. Shelley, the most neglected of all the great Romantic poets, was born in Sussex in 1792 and died in Tuscany in 1822, a brief life packed with love affairs, alarums and excursions. Holmes's book offers a serious and critical reappraisal of Shelley as a man and a writer; all his prose and poetry is carefully re-examined, his sense of spiritual and geographical isolation brilliantly described and a detailed portrait of his macabre imaginative life slowly assembled. Shelley's intense friendships with some of the most remarkable figures of his age fill Holmes's pages with a vivid parorama of revolutionary idealism and recklessness. To this is added the private story of Shelley's tortuous romantic liaisons, complications which affected both the peculiar tenor of his daily life and the remotest conceptions of his poetry. This is a stunning, entrancing biography of a fascinating subject, and a timely reissue of an absolutely seminal work.

D-Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history, took place on 6 June 1944. The subsequent battle of Normandy involved over a million men, and helped seal the fate of The Third Reich. This is a graphic account of the planning and execution of Operation Overlord, as well as the campaign which effectively destroyed the German forces in France, opening the way for the Allied advance. Including a wealth of superb photographs and maps, the book also contains 30 facsimile items of rare memorabilia, including diaries, letters and memos, bringing this 'Day of Days' dramatically to life.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING EDDIE REDMAYNE AND FELICITY JONES A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW STATESMAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A DAILY TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW REPUBLIC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A TIME MAGAZINE TOP 10 NONFICTION From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across enemy lines, Richard Holmes takes to the air in this heart-lifting history of pioneer balloonists. Falling Upwards asks why they risked their lives, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet. The stories range from early ballooning rivals to the long-distance voyages of American entrepreneurs; from the legendary balloon escape from the Prussian siege of Paris to dauntless James Glaisher, who in the 1860s flew seven miles above the earth - without oxygen. Falling Upwards has inspired the Major Motion Picture The Aeronauts - in cinemas SOON. In a glorious fusion of history, art, science and biography, this is a book about what balloons give rise to: the spirit of discovery, and the brilliant humanity of recklessness, vision and hope.