World War England

The first British major success of World War II was when the Royal Navy forced the preying pocket battleship, Graf Spee, to scuttle at sea. Hitler had ordered a blockade of the British Isles and for some months German U-boats and warships caused havoc among allied merchant shipping carrying vital supplies.

As every schoolboy knows, you can fit the whole of England on the Isle of Wight. Grotesque, visionary tycoon Sir Jack Pitman takes the saying literally and does exactly that. He constructs on the island 'The Project', a vast heritage centre containing everything 'English', from Big Ben to Stonehenge, from Manchester United to the white cliffs of Dover. The project is monstrous, risky and vastly successful. In fact, it gradually begins to rival 'Old' England and even threatens to supersede it.

Merton Naydler joined the RAF at the age of 19 and served for the next six years until May 1946. He flew Spitfires and Hurricanes during a tour of duty that took him to North Africa, Burma, and Malaya. This extremely entertaining memoir portrays wartime life in the desert environment where sand and flies and life under canvas made living and flying a daunting experience. This is the story of a sergeant pilot who learned his trade the hard way, in action over Africa and then honed his combat skills in the skies over Japanese-held tropical forests where he was eventually commissioned.

Commemorating the 80th anniversary of conscription for women, Army Girls captures remarkable stories from the last surviving veterans who served in Britain's female army and brings to life a pivotal moment in British history. Precious memories and letters are entwined in a rich narrative that travels back in time and sheds new light on being young, female and at war.

Dear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting selection of weekly 'pen-pal' letters written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the Pier Approach Baths in Bournemouth, to a wealthy American widower, living on Long Island, New York. Frances Woodsford and Commodore Paul Bigelow never met, and there was no romance - she was in her forties when he died aged ninety-seven - yet their epistolary friendship was her lifeline.

On 6 June, 1944, Britain woke up to a profound silence. Overnight, 160,000 Allied troops had vanished and an eerie emptiness settled over the country. The majority of those men would never return. This is the story of that extraordinary 24 hours. Using a wealth of first-person testimonies, renowned historian Max Arthur recounts a remarkable new oral history of D-Day, beginning with the two years leading up to the silent day that saw the UK transformed by the arrival of thousands of American and Canadian troops.

In September 1946, the London Gazette published a dispatch from Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh C T Dowding that was titled simply: "The Battle of Britain". Written and submitted to the Air Ministry in 1941, this document became the very framework for the accepted Battle of Britain narrative that has been established across the following 80 years. In this work, Andy Saunders takes a critical look at Dowding's dispatch and analyzes the facts and details contained in that important document.

Six raids that changed the course of history. Operation Judgement: one of the most spectacular efforts of World War Two, where obsolete British biplanes attacked the Italian fleet in Taranto. Operation Archery: the first true combined operation carried out by all three British forces. This successful raid persuaded Hitler that the Allies were planning a full-scale invasion. Operation Biting: a cross-Channel raid into France that was the first major attack by the British Airborne Division and its first battle honour. Operation Gunnerside: a dramatic demolition assault on Hitler's atomic bomb plant in Norway....

The personal accounts of three young women who joined up in 1940. In the summer of 1940, Britain stood alone against Germany. The British Army stood at just over one and a half million men, while the Germans had three times that many, and a population almost twice the size of ours from which to draw new waves of soldiers. Clearly, in the fight against Hitler, manpower alone wasn't going to be enough.

An anthology and miscellany of everything an Englishman should know: from Austen to Wordsworth, Jerusalem to the Scout's Honour, Kings and Queens of England to Land of Hope and Glory, Savile Row tailors to Jermyn St shirt makers, tying a Windsor knot to making a pot of tea, Victoria sponge to fish pie and the rules of cricket to Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

In 1939 Britain and her allies were completely unprepared for total war. In the spring of 1940, after months of inactivity, the powerful and highly trained German army smashed it's way through neutral Holland and Belgium and into northern France. The Allies had no choice but to retreat to the costal areas, where the 'Miracle of Dunkirk' took place. Half a million men were finally evacuated to England.

"Au bord du gouffre du 20e siècle, quatre icônes mondiales ont incarné de manière exemplaire et jusqu'à aujourd'hui ce que cela signifie de mener une vie véritablement libre". Les années 1933 à 1943 marquent le chapitre le plus noir de la modernité européenne. Face à la catastrophe, quatre femmes philosophes, à l'orée de leur 30 ans, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Ayn Rand et Hannah Arendt, développent leurs idées visionnaires : sur la relation entre l'individu et la société, l'homme et la femme, le sexe et le genre, la liberté et le totalitarisme, Dieu et l'homme.

What makes a 1930s society girl become a farmer? Answer: the Second World War. This is the story of my mother, Frances Donaldson, a privileged young woman giving her all in wartime. With her soldier husband, Jack, far away and two young children to care for, she bought a farm in Warwickshire and determined to live off it. Could an emotionally fragile young mother survive the ordeal? A Woman's War tells how she conquered WWII. An emotional tale from riches to rags, from joy to sorrow, and, at the end of the war together again with Jack, rejoicing.

When a Nazi bomb explodes near his London school in 1941, Matthew Bennett's mother decides it is time to send her children to live with her sister in the safety of the country, along with their dog and Matthew's best friend, Kate. But even in the safety of the country, intrigue and danger follow them as they find themselves facing the enemy in a way that tests them to their very limits. Follow Matthew and his siblings as they adapt to life in the country in WWII rural England and become entangled in their own battle.

In diesem detailliert beschriebenen Tagebuch des Jagdfliegers Rüdiger von Kirchmayr wird der Luftkrieg über Europa in eine neue Dimension gehoben. Wir begleiten den Soldaten durch seine Ausbildung hin zum Jagdflieger, seine ersten Einsätze an der Front und auch die ersten Verluste unter den Kameraden. Die Ritterlichkeit im Luftkampf unter Jagdfliegern wird ebenes beschrieben wie die unschöne Bombardierung von Zielen als Schlachtflieger Ersatz im Erdkampf.

How would it feel if all your sons and daughters were caught up in war? What would it be like to spend six years fearing what a telegram might bring? That was the heart-wrenching reality faced by so many families throughout the Second World War, including the parents of the Walker children. From the Blitz to the battlefields of Europe and the Far East, this is the remarkable story of four brothers and two sisters who were swept along by the momentous events of the war.

It’s the Second World War and the Savoy, the Dorchester, and Claridge’s teem with those determined not to allow Hitler to impact on their way of life. Spies: Meet Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster, the woman from M15 who has the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas. Royals: Meet Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia, born in a suite at Claridge’s that was declared Yugoslav territory for the night. Players: Meet Joyce Stone, whose husband leads the band at the Dorchester. West End Front is a witty and eye-opening account of the extraordinary events that unfolded under the reinforced ceilings of London’s grand hotels.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill - ein Jahrhundertpolitiker. Und eine "Marke", die der Meister der Selbstinszenierung gekonnt in Szene setzte. Die Utensilien: Zigarre, Gehrock, die Kollektion seiner Hüte und Zylinder, der rote Morgenmantel. Sein Zeichen: das V-Siegesfingerzeichen. "Wir sind doch alle Würmer. Aber ich glaube, ich bin ein Glühwurm", hat Churchill (1874-1965) in jungen Jahren einmal verkündet. Als Mitglied des englischen Hochadels erhielt er eine militärische Ausbildung.

Eighty years ago, Britain stood at the brink of defeat. In 1942, a string of military disasters engulfed Britain in rapid succession: the collapse in Malaya, the biggest surrender in British history at Singapore, the passing of three large German warships through the Straits of Dover in broad daylight, the longest ever retreat through Burma to the gates of India, serious losses to Rommel's forces in North Africa, the siege of Malta and the surrender at Tobruk. All of this occurred against the backdrop of catastrophic sinkings in the Atlantic and the Arctic convoys.

The Pale Horseman is the compelling sequel to the best-selling The Last Kingdom. Uhtred, Northumbrian born, raised a Viking and now married to a Saxon, is already a formidable figure and warrior. But at 20 he is still arrogant, pagan, and headstrong, so not a comfortable ally for the thoughtful, pious Alfred. But these two, with Alfred's family and a few of Uhtred's companions, are apparently all that remains of the Wessex leadership after a disastrous truce.