Class Warfare

Very few living men have taken part in a battle, and many must wonder how they would acquit themselves if ever they had to. A medieval battle was a very complex affair; it was far from being a simple...

In July 1942 German and Italian forces were on the point of sweeping away the remainder of the British resistance in the Middle East and triumphantly overrunning Egypt. If this had happened, the...

For as long as generalship in war is studied, there is certain to be controversy over the qualities, achievements and treatment of Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck. 'The Auk', as he was...

Very few living men have taken part in a battle, and many must wonder how they would acquit themselves if ever they had to. A medieval battle was a very complex affair; it was far from being a simple...

Within these pages the vivid and colourful story of a remarkable episode in the 'high empire' period of British history. The Mahdi's rising in the Sudan in the 1880's, which started as a localised...

Although the Welsh are perhaps not widely known for their military history, the story of warfare in Wales spans some three thousand years. In Famous Welsh Battles, Philip Warner gives a detailed...

Douglas Haig is probably the most controversial figure in British military history. No previous commander ever oversaw such enormous casualties. By 1917 Haig commanded the largest army Britain had...

Firepower is an absorbing and stimulating study of methods of winning wars. Firepower does not invariably mean what comes out of the barrel of a gun; it comprises everything from morale to tactics,...

Among the British troops bound for the Black Sea in May 1854 was a young officer in the 5th Dragoon Guards, Richard Temple Godman, who sent home throughout the entire Crimea campaign many detailed...

On the 31st of July 1917, the small Belgian village of Passchendaele became the focus of one of the most gruelling, bloody and bizarre battle of World War I. By 6th November, when Passchendaele...

Today the castle is only too often a romantic ruin; but in the Middle Ages it was an important military and administrative centre, essentially utilitarian in its design and in the purposes it served...

The term 'regiment' was first used in the British army as late as the seventeenth century when small companies were grouped together to form more convenient battle units. Since then while our army as...

On 25th September 1915, and for a few days afterwards, the small town of Loos, between Lens and La Bassee in Northern France, became the centre of one of the most intense and bloody battles of the...

The Crimean War is famous as a source of heroic and horrific legend. Philip Warner's concern in his reassessment of the campaign has been to uncover the true course of the war, to place the heroics...

At the end of the First World War the victors decided to punish the aggressors and while doing so to establish free, democratic governments of ethnic groups which would, supposedly, have no reason to...

'Truth is stranger than fiction. Some incidents of the war are so bizarre or so brave that no reputable fiction writer would have dared to invent them. War brings out the worst and the best in human...

On 23 April 1918 a force drawn from the Royal Navy and Royal Marines launched one of the most daring raids in history. The aim was to block the Zeebrugge Canal, thereby denying U-boats access,...