Continuing our review of military classics, Military Times looks at A J P Taylor’s controversial publication on the causes of the Second World War. For a book about events a quarter of a century in the past, the storm raised by the publication of A J P Taylor’s book on the causes of the Second […]
Category: Books
The Command of the Air by Giulio Douhet : a Military Times Classic
The Command of the Air is the greatest military treatise on air war ever written – a dogmatic manifesto promising victory through strategic bombing. Giulio Douhet (1869-1930), air war’s greatest prophet, ought to have been a First World War fighter ace. In fact, he may never have learnt to fly. He was an army officer, […]
Bouncing Bomb Man: The Science of Sir Barnes Wallis
Ian Murray Haynes Publishing, £25 ISBN 978-1844255887 Barnes Wallis came to the public’s attention with the release of The Dam Busters, the 1955 film that illustrated the success of bouncing bombs in the destruction of German dams in 1943, and the heroism of the men of 617 Squadron. Little else was generally known about the […]
Great War Lives: A Guide for Family Historians – Paul Reed
Fuelled by TV shows such as Who Do You Think You Are?, interest in family history has exploded in recent years. And because it was the first British war in which the whole nation – women workers, nurses, and ambulance drivers, as well as men; volunteers as well as conscripts and professional soldiers, sailors, and […]
Small Wars by Colonel C E Callwell : a Military Times Classic
We review Colonel C E Callwell’s famous Late Victorian counter-insurgency manual, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice. The military academies are buzzing with counter-insurgency theory. Recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere are putting a premium on anti-guerrilla doctrine. Little wonder, then, that Colonel C E Callwell’s Small Wars, a century-old manual […]
Military Times’ Book of the Month: The Kill Zone, by Chris Ryan
Book Club: The Kill Zone Chris Ryan is ‘the one that got away’: the one member of the famous Bravo Two Zero SAS team dropped into the north-western desert of Iraq in 1991 who succeeded in escaping across the Syrian border. Of the others, three were killed and four captured. Ryan’s story of the military debacle […]
Cultures of War, By John W Dower
‘A date which will live in infamy’ was the iconic phrase coined by President Roosevelt to describe the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The same phrase was frequently used in the media after the 9/11 attacks. Prof. John Dower, whose previous works include a Pulitzer Prize winning study of post-war Japan, uses this as a […]
Killing Time, by Nicolas J Saunders
Killing Time: Archaeology and the First World War In the new, revised (paperback) edition of Killing Time, Nicholas J Saunders has updated his groundbreaking book on archaeology and the First World War. The original chapters remain, and it is pleasing to see the addition of a new chapter on the very recent excavations taking place […]
Forgotten Voices of the Victoria Cross, by Roderick Bailey
Compiled from the sound archives of the Imperial War Museum, this oral history recounts the deeds of those – as recounted by the men and their admiring comrades – who were awarded the highest decoration in Britain’s gift for acts of valour. Covering VCs won in conflicts from the award’s inauguration during the Crimean War […]
Six Weeks, by Jonathan Lewis-Stempel
Six Weeks: the short and gallant life of the British officer in the First World War The stiff upper-lip spirit of the public schools that provided the bulk of the subalterns who died in such droves in the Great War’s trenches is much mocked today. But Jonathan Lewis-Stempel’s superb study of them and their antique […]