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In Australia, Anzac Day, the anniversary of the first landings at Gallipoli, is one of the most important dates in the national calendar. Yet in Britain, the campaign is largely forgotten. The key to this contrast lies in the way in which the campaign's history has been recorded. To many Australians, the Anzac legend is a romantic war myth that proclaims the prowess of Australian participants in the campaign. It is an exercise in nation-building. In Britain, the campaign is also remembered in romantic terms, but the purpose here is to assuage the pain of defeat. Reconsidering Gallipoli broadens the debate over the cultural history of the First World War beyond the Western Front. The final chapter traces the influence of the early accounts on subsequent portrayals including Alan Moorehead's 1956 book, Bean's post 1965 rehabilitation, Peter Weir's 1981 film, and revisionist attacks on the legend.
It’s been a State secret for more than 70 years: The official line in the UK has always been that it never happened – but this new work challenges the assertion that no German force set foot on British soil during World War Two (the Channel Islands excepted), on active military service. Churchill’s Last Wartime Secret reveals the remarkable story of a mid-war seaborne enemy raid on an Isle of Wight radar station. It describes the purpose and scope of the attack, the composition of the raiding German force and how it was immediately, and understandably, ‘hushed-up’ by Winston Churchill’s wartime administration, in order to safeguard public morale. Circumventing the almost complete lack of official British archival documentation, the author relies on compelling and previously undisclosed firsthand evidence from Germany to underpin the book’s narrative and claims; thus distinguishing it from other tales of rumored seaborne enemy assaults on British soil during the 1939-45 conflict. After examining the outcome and repercussions of this astonishing incident, what emerges is an event of major symbolic significance in the annals of wartime history.
The Making of the Nations and Cultures of the New World explores the question of how a culture - a collective consciousness - is born. Gérard Bouchard compares the histories of New World collectivities, which were driven by a dream of freedom and sovereignty, and finds both major differences and striking commonalities in their formation and evolution. He also considers the myths and discursive strategies devised by elites in their efforts to unite and mobilize diversified populations.
This book is a collection of essays arising out of the OCyZealandiaOCOs Great WarOCO conference organised by the New Zealand Military History Committee in November 2003. In 32 essays by distinguished military historians from New Zealand and around the world, various aspects of New ZealandOCOs involvement in World War One are discussed. Subjects include the Pioneer Maori Battalion, women who opposed the war, the early years of the RSA, Gallipoli, the infantry on the Somme, New ZealandOCOs involvement in the naval war, prostitution and the New Zealand soldier, the Home Defence, religion in the First World War, and the Armistice. New ZealandOCOs Great War is a fascinating miscellany of informed comment on and insight into the event that did most to shape New Zealand as a nation. Contributors include New ZealandOCOs own Chris Pugsley, Glyn Harper, Terry Kinloch, Monty Soutar, Megan Hutching, Vincent Orange and Bronwyn Dalley, as well as Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Jennifer Keene, Jenny McLeod, Pierre Purseigle, Peter Stanley and Gary Sheffield from overseas."
A companion volume to the same author's "The British Field Marshals 1736–1997", this book outlines the lives of the 115 officers who held the rank of Admiral of the Fleet in the Royal Navy from 1734, when it took its modern form, to 1995, when the last one was appointed. Each entry gives details of the dates of the birth and death of its subjects, their careers ashore and afloat, their family backgrounds, and the ships, campaigns and combats in which they served. Each is placed clearly in its domestic or international political context. The actions recorded include major fleet battles under sail or steam, single-ship duels, encounters with pirates on the Spanish Main and up the rivers of Borneo, the suppression of the Slave Trade (for which the Navy receives little gratitude), landing parties to deal with local dictators and revolutionaries, and the services of naval brigades in China, Egypt and South Africa.
This Guide to the Study and Use of Military History is designed to foster an appreciation of the value of military history and explain its uses and the resources available for its study. It is not a work to be read and lightly tossed aside, but one the career soldier should read again or use as a reference at those times during his career when necessity or leisure turns him to the contemplation of the military past.