Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Johns’ book can, in essence, be divided into two distinct sections: his ‘junior’ and ‘senior’ officer days, and then his days shouldering the responsibilities of air rank, culminating in his appointment as Chief of the Air Staff.
Book Reviews
REVIEW – Photographs of the Third Reich: Images from the Wehrmacht
Although its subject matter is Germany, this slim volume is packed full of photographs garnered by the author from around the world, from the USA to such surprising places as Argentina, Turkey, and Israel.
REVIEW – Sparta’s First Attic War: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta, 478 – 446 BC
With this book, Paul Rahe continues his projected six-volume account of the history of the Spartan state.
REVIEW – The Fortress: the Great Siege of Przemysl
I had thought I knew a lot about the First World War. Until I read this book. Then I discovered a yawning gap in knowledge and understanding.
REVIEW – The Armies and the Wars of the Sun King 1643 – 1715 Volume 1: The Guard of Louis XIV
During the second half of the 17th century, France underwent a military transformation of such magnitude that in the space of a generation it overturned the supremacy of Spain to become the pre-eminent power in Europe.
REVIEW – A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith During the First World War
The First World War created new experiences of pain and suffering, and had profound consequences for the shape of wars to come. But in one respect the Great War of 1914-1918 was curiously old-fashioned and traditional – and that was in the realms of spirituality, superstition, and religious faith.
REVIEW – Panzer Commander Hermann Balck: Germany’s master tactician
Hermann Balch has been described as the ‘greatest German general no one ever heard of’. Stephen Robinson, a graduate of the Australian Command and Staff College, has attempted to address this paradox, but with only partial success.
REVIEW – Trinity: the treachery and pursuit of the most dangerous spy in history
Neil Faulkner reviews this compelling biography of Klaus Fuchs, a brilliant academic physicist and refugee from Nazi Germany, who has been described as both ‘the spy of the century’ and ‘the most dangerous spy in history’.
REVIEW – Normandy ’44: D-Day and the Battle for France
The truth is that the Normandy Campaign was a vast enterprise, of engineering, logistics, strategy, and planning, but it was also, once under way, driven by events that could not be foreseen.
REVIEW – The British are coming: the war for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775 – 1777
With his description of the events at Portsmouth, Atkinson once again justifies a New York Times review of a previous volume which described his work as ‘a tapestry of fabulous richness and complexity… Atkinson is a master of what might be called “pointillism history”, assembling the small dots of pure colour into a vivid, tumbling narrative…’.
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