The Armchair General: can you defeat the Nazis?

REVIEW BY TOBY CLARK Here is a history of the Second World War with a twist. John Buckley is a professor of military history at the University of Wolverhampton and a writer with both academic and popular histories to his name. Buckley’s flair for bringing new analysis to pre-existing assumptions…

Military History Matters 134

• Cunningham and Cape Matapan: taking on Mussolini’s battle fleet
• Gettysburg: the five key myths
• Battlefield Ukraine: lessons from history
• The real Vlad Dracula: in search of a 15th-century warlord
• The World at War: fifty years of a television classic…

Gettysburg: the five key myths

The greatest battle in American history took place 160 years ago this summer, in July 1863. Fred Chiaventone identifies some common misunderstandings about this crucial engagement.…

Cunningham & Cape Matapan: taking on Mussolini’s battle fleet

For our special this issue, Graham Goodlad analyses the achievements of Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham, universally known to his peers as ‘ABC’. In this first part, he looks at Cunningham’s life and career, while in the second he offers a detailed commentary on the battle that is widely regarded as…

The Coalitions Against Napoleon

REVIEW BY ANDRÉ VAN LOON The subject of The Coalitions Against Napoleon is fascinating and rich in potential. Moving beyond the well-trodden path of personality-based writing (such as Napoleon versus Wellington, biographies of Napoleon’s marshals, or the career of Horatio Nelson), this book promises to provide a fresh look at…

Back to the drawing board: the Avro Manchester

The Avro Manchester originated with an Air Ministry specification dating from November 1936 for a bomber capable of carrying a load in excess of 8,000lbs over more than 2,000 miles. This aircraft would be powered by a Rolls-Royce X-Type engine, which was then still under development. This engine, soon renamed…

The Second World War in living colour

Most books about the Second World War include only black-and-white photographs, and these are often sketchy or blurred. Some are even staged pieces of propaganda. Colour photography was not unknown at the time, of course, but it was immensely expensive and therefore rarely used. Artists with historical leanings have long…

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