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The Great Escaper: The Life and Death of Roger Bushell (Extraordinary Lives, Extraordinary Stories of World War Two)
by Simon PearsonSUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER 'This gripping biography... Pearson has done uncommonly well to unearth so much.' (Max Hastings, Sunday Times)Roger Bushell was 'Big X', mastermind of the mass breakout from Stalag Luft III in March 1944, immortalised in the Hollywood film The Great Escape.Very little was known about Bushell until 2011, when his family donated his private papers - a treasure trove of letters, photographs and diaries - to the Imperial War Museum. Through exclusive access to this material - as well as fascinating new research from other sources - Simon Pearson, Chief Night Editor of The Times, has now written the first biography of this iconic figure. Born in South Africa in 1910, Roger Bushell was the son of a British mining engineer. By the age of 29, this charismatic character who spoke nine languages had become a London barrister with a reputation for successfully defending those much less fortunate than him. He was also renowned as an international ski champion and fighter pilot with a string of glamorous girlfriends. On 23 May, 1940, his Spitfire was shot down during a dogfight over Boulogne after destroying two German fighters. From then on his life was governed by an unquenchable desire to escape from Occupied Europe.Over the next four years he made three escapes, coming within 100 yards of the Swiss border during his first attempt. His second escape took him to Prague where he was sheltered by the Czech resistance for eight months before he was captured. The three months of savage interrogation in Berlin by the Gestapo that followed made him even more determined. Prisoner or not, he would do his utmost to fight the Nazis. His third (and last escape) destabilised the Nazi leadership and captured the imagination of the world.He died on 29 March 1944, murdered on the explicit instructions of Adolf Hitler.Simon Pearson's revealing biography is a vivid account of war and love, triumph and tragedy - one man's attempt to challenge remorseless tyranny in the face of impossible odds.
The Great Escapers: The Full Story of the Second World War's Most Remarkable Mass Escape
by Tim CarrollThe Great Escape was one of the most remarkable episodes of the Second World War. After the attempt to break 200 men out of Hermann Gring's 'escape-proof' prisoner-of-war camp, 76 Allied officers managed to create havoc behind enemy lines before most were eventually recaptured. Now, over 60 years after the event, the ingenuity of the masterminds behind this audacious break-out is celebrated.The Great Escapers tells the story of these men who managed to break free from the supposedly impenetrable barbed wire and watchtowers of Stalag Luft III, Gring's showcase prison camp near Sagan. Some of them were also involved in other daring escape attempts, including the famous Wooden Horse episode, also turned into a classic film, and the little-known Sachsenhausen break-out, engineered by five Great Escape survivors sent to die in the notorious concentration camp on Hitler's personal orders. Also revealed is the important role Stalag Luft III played in Allied intelligence operations within occupied Europe: the prisoners developed an intricate espionage network, feeding details of military deployments and strength levels back home and relaying details about the accuracy of bombing raids. Tragically, 50 of those involved in the Great Escape were murdered by the Gestapo. The author examines their deaths and the post-war investigation to bring their killers to justice. The Great Escapers is an extraordinary story, charted through the experiences of those who lived under the sweeping searchlights of the ominous watchtowers and ending with accounts from the seven remaining men who broke out that March night over 60 years ago - the last of the Great Escapers.
Great Escapes: The Story Of Mi9's Second World War Escape And Evasion Maps
by Barbara BondThe definitive history of MI9's emergency escape and evasion mapping programme and the contribution the maps made to victory in 1945. Fascinating stories of secret maps used by prisoners of World War II.
The Great Expedition: Sir Francis Drake on the Spanish Main 1585–86 (Raid)
by Peter Dennis Angus Konstam Brian Delf Alan GillilandIn 1585, the English launched a pre-emptive strike against Spain, by attacking her New World colonies. Led by Sir Francis Drake, in command of 21 ships and 1,800 soldiers, the expedition struck first at the Canary Islands, then attacked the city of Santo Domingo and the treasure port of Cartagena. Frequently outnumbered, Drake's soldiers won an series of spectacular victories and, laden with treasure, sailed home to a hero's welcome.
The Great Expedition: Sir Francis Drake on the Spanish Main 1585–86 (Raid #17)
by Angus KonstamIn 1585, the English launched a pre-emptive strike against Spain, by attacking her New World colonies. Led by Sir Francis Drake, in command of 21 ships and 1,800 soldiers, the expedition struck first at the Canary Islands, then attacked the city of Santo Domingo and the treasure port of Cartagena. Frequently outnumbered, Drake's soldiers won an series of spectacular victories and, laden with treasure, sailed home to a hero's welcome.
The Great Explosion: Gunpowder, the Great War, and a Disaster on the Kent Marshes
by Brian DillonThe Great Explosion by Brian Dillon: a masterful account of a terrible disaster in a remarkable placeIn April 1916, shortly before the commencement of the Battle of the Somme, a fire started in a vast munitions works located in the Kentish marshes. The resulting series of explosions killed 108 people and injured many more.In a brilliant piece of storytelling, Brian Dillon recreates the events of that terrible day - and, in so doing, sheds a fresh and unexpected light on the British home front in the Great War. He offers a chilling natural history of explosives and their effects on the earth, on buildings, and on human and animal bodies. And he evokes with vivid clarity one of Britain's strangest and most remarkable landscapes - where he has been a habitual explorer for many years. The Great Explosion is a profound work of narrative, exploration and inquiry from one of our most brilliant writers.'The Great Explosion is exhilarating and moving and lyrical. It is a quiet evisceration of a landscape through the discovery of a lost history of destructiveness, a meditation on Englishness, an autobiography, a mapping of absences. I loved it.' Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes''What a fascinating, unclassifiable, brilliant book, confirming Brian Dillon's reputation as one of our most innovative and elegant non-fictioneers. No one else could have written it.' Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways'Forensic, fascinating, endlessly interesting' Philip Hoare, Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Leviathan andThe Sea Inside 'A subtle, human history of the early twentieth century ... Explosions are a fruitful subject in Dillon's hands, one that enables him to reflect movingly on the instant between life and death, on the frailty of human endeavour, and on the readiness of nations to tear one another apart. The Great Explosion deftly covers a tumultuous period of history while centring on the tiniest moments - just punctuation marks in time' Financial Times '[Dillon's] account of the Faversham explosion is as bold as it is dramatic, while his descriptive passages about the marshlands of Kent are so evocative that you can practically feel the mud sticking at your feet' Evening Standard'A brilliant evocation of place grasped in its modernity' Guardian'Dillon ... has a WG Sebald-like gift for interrogating the landscape ... a work of real elegiac seriousness that goes to the heart of a case of human loss and destruction in England's sinister pastures green' Ian Thomson, Irish Times'Exhilarating ... utterly beguiling' Literary Review
The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Adaptation Of The Novel By F. Scott Fitzgerald (Collins Classics)
by F. Scott FitzgeraldHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP
by Ronan McGreevyA gripping investigation into one of Irish history's greatest mysteries, Great Hatred reveals the true story behind one of the most significant political assassinations to ever have been committed on British soil.'Heart-stopping . . . The book is both forensic and a page-turner, and ultimately deeply tragic, for Ireland as much as for the murder victim.'MICHAEL PORTILLO'Gripping from start to finish. McGreevy turns a forensic mind to a political assassination that changed the course of history, uncovering a trove of unseen evidence in the process.'ANITA ANAND, author of The Patient AssassinOn 22 June 1922, Sir Henry Wilson - the former head of the British army and one of those credited with winning the First World War - was shot and killed by two veterans of that war turned IRA members in what was the most significant political murder to have taken place on British soil for more than a century. His assassins were well-educated and pious men. One had lost a leg during the Battle of Passchendaele. Shocking British society to the core, the shooting caused consternation in the government and almost restarted the conflict between Britain and Ireland that had ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty just five months earlier. Wilson's assassination triggered the Irish Civil War, which cast the darkest of shadows over the new Irish State. Who ordered the killing? Why did two English-born Irish nationalists kill an Irish-born British imperialist? What was Wilson's role in the Northern Ireland government and the violence which matched the intensity of the Troubles fifty years later? Why would Michael Collins, who risked his life to sign a peace treaty with Great Britain, want one of its most famous soldiers dead, and how did the Wilson assassination lead to Collins' tragic death in an ambush two months later?Drawing upon newly released archival material and never-before-seen documentation, Great Hatred is a revelatory work that sheds light on a moment that changed the course of Irish and British history for ever.'McGreevy provides more than the anatomy of a political murder; in reconstructing this era of blood, poverty and wartime trauma, he also gives full expression to the terrible forces that WB Yeats once called the "fanatic heart" and the "great hatred".'THE TIMES'Thoughtful and well-researched . . . an important and valuable addition to the library of the Irish Revolution.'PROFESSOR DIARMAID FERRITER, University College Dublin
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
by John M BarryTHE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'Everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history' Bill Gates'Easily our fullest, richest, most panoramic history of the subject' New York Times Book ReviewIn 1918, the world faced the deadliest pandemic in human history. What can the story of the so-called Spanish Flu teach us about the fight against present day crises, and how to prepare for future outbreaks? At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the aftermath of Covid-19 and future pandemics looming on the horizon.
The Great Islamic Conquests AD 632–750 (Guide to...)
by Dr David NicolleFew centuries in world history have had such a profound and long-lasting impact as the first hundred years of Islamic history. In this book, David Nicolle examines the extensive Islamic conquests between AD 632 and 750. These years saw the religion and culture of Islam erupt from the Arabian Peninsula and spread across an area far larger than that of the Roman Empire. The effects of this rapid expansion were to shape European affairs for centuries to come. This book examines the social and military history of the period, describing how and why the Islamic expansion was so successful.
Great Lakes Warships 1812–1815 (New Vanguard #188)
by Mark Lardas Mr Paul WrightWhen war broke out in 1812, neither the United States Navy nor the Royal Navy had more than a token force on the Great Lakes. However, once the shooting started, it sparked a ship-building arms race that continued throughout the war. This book examines the design and development of the warships built upon the lakes during the war, emphasising their differences from their salt-water contemporaries. It then goes onto cover their operational use as they were pitted against each other in a number of clashes on the lakes that often saw ships captured, re-crewed, and thrown back against their pervious owners. Released in 2012 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, this is a timely look at a small, freshwater naval war.
Great Lakes Warships 1812–1815 (New Vanguard)
by Paul Wright Mark LardasWhen war broke out in 1812, neither the United States Navy nor the Royal Navy had more than a token force on the Great Lakes. However, once the shooting started, it sparked a ship-building arms race that continued throughout the war. This book examines the design and development of the warships built upon the lakes during the war, emphasising their differences from their salt-water contemporaries. It then goes onto cover their operational use as they were pitted against each other in a number of clashes on the lakes that often saw ships captured, re-crewed, and thrown back against their pervious owners. Released in 2012 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, this is a timely look at a small, freshwater naval war.
The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: Escaping Tyranny in North Korea
by Blaine HardenA non-fiction thriller by international bestselling author Blaine Harden (Escape from Camp 14) that explores the world's most repressive state through the intertwined lives of two North Koreans, one infamous, one obscure: Kim Il Sung, the former North Korean leader and No Kum Sok, once the state's youngest jet fighter pilot.Shortly before the Korean War ended, No Kum Sok met Kim Il Sung, who congratulated him for his flying skill and his courage. A few months later, No Kum Sok stole a Soviet-made MiG-15 and flew it to a US airfield in South Korea. Beginning with the arbitrary division of Korea in 1945 and ending two months after the shaky armistice that halted combat in the Korean War, The Great Leader & the Fighter Pilot is an ambitious and gripping book which digs deeply into the character of the Kim family dictatorship.At once an irresistible adventure story and an authoritative guide to the notorious state, it explains why North Korea remains so isolated, why it created and maintains a vast gulag of concentration camps, and why it is still so angry at the western world.
The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius and Britain's First Prime Minister
by Edward PearceThe year 1721 has many splendours: great houses built by William Kent, fine pictures and the fruits of commerce. But there are also thirteen public hanging days a year, drunkenness is endemic, organised crime rampages through the streets. And politics are ferocious. Only a generation earlier, The Pretender failed to take the Crown; the new King is cursed as a damned foreigner; James's followers - the Jacobites - conspire and are persecuted; the South Sea Bubble collapses.Robert Walpole, once imprisoned for financial chicanery, assumes political control and becomes 'Prime Minister'. He personally detects a Jacobite plot, is dismissed in 1727 on the death of George I, recruits the new King's clever wife, Caroline, and bounces cheerfully back. Coarse, corrupt and cynical, Walpole dominates King, Parliament and Government until 1742. This is Mr Worldywiseman, keeping England out of war for twenty years and setting up a stable and growing economy. All politics of a kind we can recognise today begin with Robert Walpole. And here, in Edward Pearce's elegant book, he is brought vividly back to life.
Great Men in the Second World War: The Rise and Fall of the Big Three
by Paul DukesGreat Men in the Second World War provides a new perspective on the role of the individual in history. Paul Dukes selects five Great Men, each in his turn one of the leaders of the three victorious powers, the UK, the USA and the USSR. The identity of the Big Three changed significantly during the last months of the conflict. Roosevelt died in April 1945 and was succeeded by Truman. Churchill lost the general election to Attlee in July. Stalin alone provided continuity throughout the conferences of the Big Three, and immediately beyond.The book explores the power of these individuals, asking such questions as:-To what extent did the leaders exert their own influence and to what extent could they be considered to be spokesmen for their countries?-How significant was it that Truman and Attlee had less colourful personalities than Roosevelt and Churchill?-Was Stalin uniquely bad while the others were good?Drawing in particular on the record of their interaction at the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, but also making use of other sources including novels as well as works of history, Paul Dukes sheds light on both the major statesmen involved and the nature of the Second World War. This is a book that will be useful for students of the Second World War and anyone with an interest in the role of individuals in history.
Great Men in the Second World War: The Rise and Fall of the Big Three
by Paul DukesGreat Men in the Second World War provides a new perspective on the role of the individual in history. Paul Dukes selects five Great Men, each in his turn one of the leaders of the three victorious powers, the UK, the USA and the USSR. The identity of the Big Three changed significantly during the last months of the conflict. Roosevelt died in April 1945 and was succeeded by Truman. Churchill lost the general election to Attlee in July. Stalin alone provided continuity throughout the conferences of the Big Three, and immediately beyond.The book explores the power of these individuals, asking such questions as:-To what extent did the leaders exert their own influence and to what extent could they be considered to be spokesmen for their countries?-How significant was it that Truman and Attlee had less colourful personalities than Roosevelt and Churchill?-Was Stalin uniquely bad while the others were good?Drawing in particular on the record of their interaction at the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, but also making use of other sources including novels as well as works of history, Paul Dukes sheds light on both the major statesmen involved and the nature of the Second World War. This is a book that will be useful for students of the Second World War and anyone with an interest in the role of individuals in history.
Great Military Disasters: From Bannockburn to Stalingrad
by Julian SpilsburyGreat Military Disasters tells the dramatic stories behind the world's most calamitous conflicts. From the French army's failure to understand the impact of new technology at Crécy to Hitler's blatant overconfidence at Stalingrad, military historian Julian Spilsbury provides thrilling accounts of each disaster, covering exactly what went wrong, how and why. Of course, a disastrous outcome for one side meant victory for another, so as well as exploring the reasons the conflict ended in disaster, Great Military Disasters also reveals the key to victory. Eyewitness quotations add another dimension to this intriguing study of human incompetence of the gravest kind.
The Great Mistake: The Battle for Antwerp and the Beveland Peninsula, September 1944
by Peter BealeOn 4 September 1944, the British 11th Armoured Division entered Antwerp, capturing the docks intact. Basing his account on official war diaries, unit histories and personal recollections, Peter Beale examines the background, considers the actions taken and forgone between 4 and 26 September and reviews their effects on subsequent operations.
Great Naval Battles: From Medieval Wars to the Present Day
by Dr Helen DoeThis book recalls 50 of the greatest naval battles to have been fought since medieval times, examining why they took place, who was in command and what impact they had on both the victors and the losers.From the Battle of Flanborough Head in 1779 to Jutland in 1916, Great Naval Battles also considers how changes in technology and battle tactics impact upon the outcome and what makes a decisive victory.Written by the renowned naval historian Dr Helen Doe, this is a fascinating analysis of maritime power through the ages.
Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases: The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy
by Robert E. HarkavyGreat Power Competition for Overseas Bases: The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy explores the geopolitics of the major powers' overseas basing systems in relation to global strategies and changes in the international system in three fairly distinct phases: the interwar, early postwar, and recent postwar periods. This book links the great powers' competition for overseas bases to several streams of more or less contemporary international relations theory. This monograph consists of seven chapters and opens with an introduction to the diplomacy of basing access, followed by a discussion on the different types or purposes of basing access as they have evolved over the past several decades in response to changes in diplomacy and military technology. The major powers' overseas basing-access networks in the consecutive interwar, early postwar, and recent postwar periods are then reviewed, along with the earlier corpus of geopolitical theory, specifically as it relates to basing diplomacy. Emphasis is on the conflicting assumptions about what reciprocal strategic advantages and disadvantages inhere to the geographic positions of the United States and USSR. The final chapter considers a number of ""functional"" areas of world politics that are closely intertwined with basing diplomacy, and relates the competition for facilities to raw materials access, surrogate wars, strategic deterrence, arms control, balances of payments, arms sales and aid, alliances, and other such staple concerns of international relations. This book will be of interest to political scientists, military and government officials, diplomats, and policymakers.
Great Power Cyber Competition: Competing and Winning in the Information Environment (Routledge Advances in Defence Studies)
by David V. Gioe Margaret W. SmithThis volume conceptualizes the threats, challenges, opportunities, and boundaries of great power cyber competition of the 21st century. This book focuses on a key dimension of contemporary great power competition that is often less understood due to its intangible character: the competition taking place in the cyber domain, including information and cyber operations. Democracies across the globe find themselves in an unrelenting competition with peer and near-peer competitors, with a prevailing notion that no state is "safe" from the informational contest. Adversarial powers, particularly China and Russia, recognize that most competition is principally non-kinetic but dominates the information environment and cyberspace, and the volume articulates the Russian and Chinese strategies to elevate cyber and information competition to a central position. Western governments and, in particular, the U.S. government have long conceived of a war–peace duality, but that perspective is giving way to a more nuanced perception of competition. This volume goes beyond analyzing the problems prevalent in the information space and offers a roadmap for Western powers to compete in and protect the global information environment from malicious actors. Its genesis is rooted in the proposition that it is time for the West to push back against aggression and that it needs a relevant framework and tools to do so. The book demonstrates that Western democratic states currently lack both the strategic and intellectual acumen to compete and win in the information and cyber domains, and argues that the West needs a strategy to compete with near-peer powers in information and cyber warfare. This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-warfare, information warfare, defense studies, and international relations in general, as well as practitioners.
Great Power Cyber Competition: Competing and Winning in the Information Environment (Routledge Advances in Defence Studies)
by David V. Gioe Margaret W. SmithThis volume conceptualizes the threats, challenges, opportunities, and boundaries of great power cyber competition of the 21st century. This book focuses on a key dimension of contemporary great power competition that is often less understood due to its intangible character: the competition taking place in the cyber domain, including information and cyber operations. Democracies across the globe find themselves in an unrelenting competition with peer and near-peer competitors, with a prevailing notion that no state is "safe" from the informational contest. Adversarial powers, particularly China and Russia, recognize that most competition is principally non-kinetic but dominates the information environment and cyberspace, and the volume articulates the Russian and Chinese strategies to elevate cyber and information competition to a central position. Western governments and, in particular, the U.S. government have long conceived of a war–peace duality, but that perspective is giving way to a more nuanced perception of competition. This volume goes beyond analyzing the problems prevalent in the information space and offers a roadmap for Western powers to compete in and protect the global information environment from malicious actors. Its genesis is rooted in the proposition that it is time for the West to push back against aggression and that it needs a relevant framework and tools to do so. The book demonstrates that Western democratic states currently lack both the strategic and intellectual acumen to compete and win in the information and cyber domains, and argues that the West needs a strategy to compete with near-peer powers in information and cyber warfare. This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-warfare, information warfare, defense studies, and international relations in general, as well as practitioners.
The Great Powers and Orthodox Christendom: The Crisis over the Eastern Church in the Era of the Crimean War (Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000)
by Jack FaireyThis new political history of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire explains why Orthodoxy became the subject of acute political competition between the Great Powers during the mid 19th century. It also explores how such rivalries led, paradoxically, both to secularizing reforms and to Europe's last great war of religion - the Crimean War.
The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire
by Marian KentHow far was the end of the Ottoman Empire the result of Great Power imperialism and how far the result of structural weaknesses within the Empire itself? These studies of the foreign policy of each of the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire examine these fundamental issues.
The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire
by Marian KentHow far was the end of the Ottoman Empire the result of Great Power imperialism and how far the result of structural weaknesses within the Empire itself? These studies of the foreign policy of each of the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire examine these fundamental issues.