A study of British Foreign Secretaries from the Napoleonic Wars
until Suez. When writing his magnificent biography of Robert Peel,
Douglas Hurd found himself caught up in a debate that fascinated
him as a former diplomat and Foreign Secretary - the argument
between the noisy popular liberal interventionist approach and the
more conservative diplomatic approach concentrating on
co-operation between nations. The argument has run for two
centuries and is at the heart of heated discussion on both sides
of the Atlantic today.
This is the first account in English of a much-overlooked, but
important, First World War battlefront located in the mountains
astride the border between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Not well known in the West, the battles of Isonzo were nevertheless
ferocious, casualties totalling over 1.75 million. In sharp contrast
to claims that neither the Italian nor the Austrian armies were
viable fighting forces, Schindler aims to bring the terrible
sacrifices endured by both armies back to their rightful place in
the history of 20th century Europe. The Habsburg Empire, he
contends, lost the war for military and economic reasons rather than
for political or ethnic ones.
New in illustrated
boards - 409pp,
15 b/w illustrations
This gripping and
richly illustrated account of wartime Greece explores the impact
of the Nazi Occupation upon the lives and values of ordinary
people. The first full account of the experience of occupation, it
offers a vividly human picture of resistance fighters and black
marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers, Jews
and starving villagers.
The arrival of Soviet troops at the end of January 1945 at the
town of Küstrin was a shock to the German High Command - the
Soviets were now only 50 miles from Berlin itself. The Red Army
needed the vital road and rail bridges passing through Küstrin for
their assault on the capital, but flooding and their own high
command's strategic blunders resulted in a sixty-day siege by two
Soviet armies which totally destroyed the town. The delay in the
Soviet advance also gave the Germans time to consolidate the
defence of Berlin, west of the Oder River.
The author's experiences during Operation Telic - the
liberation of Iraq in 2003. He was a Territorial soldier serving
with the TIGER (Theatre Information General Equipment Register)
team in Kuwait and Iraq. In the sweltering heat of the desert they
played their part in the eventual victory, and William's account
of their experiences gives a good impression of what conditions
were like for Allied troops on the ground. They had to contend
with an alien environment, a hostile climate, an unknown enemy and
the constant threat of biological or chemical weapons.
