For a baby boomer brought up on the Biggles stories of Captain W E Johns, the opening pages of this classic memoir of World War aviation seem eerily familiar. Cecil Lewis and his schoolfriend decide to enlist in the RFC at the age of 16.
Reviewing the best military history exhibitions, with Peter Popham.
• Somme, 1916: World War I’s baptism of fire
• Battle of Little Bighorn: the five key myths
• Spanish civil war: the siege of Toledo
• The Great Arab revolt: a sideshow to a sideshow
• The ultimate arms race: superpowers struggle for nuclear domination
In the second part of our special, Stephen Roberts focuses on the little-known battle whose appalling casualty rate laid down a marker for the Somme.
In the first part of our special, Stephen Roberts marks the 110th anniversary of the offensive that saw the bloodiest day in Britain’s military history, before looking in more detail at the Battle of the Boar’s Head in the second part.
Infographics: Amy Brunskill / Images: public domain, National Army Museum, Canadian War Museum
Since the late 1990s, the study of World War I has moved beyond the constraints of military history to embrace an increasingly multidisciplinary agenda. Not least in this has been the adoption and incorporation of anthropological and archaeological perspectives, focusing…
REVIEW BY NICHOLAS SAUNDERS The past 25 years have seen a revolution in our understanding of war (especially modern war), due partly to the shift from a solely military-history approach to an interdisciplinary one incorporating archaeology, anthropology, and scientific-technological advances.…
With Marc DeSantis
The decade between the first successful powered flight – made by the Wright Brothers on 17 December 1903 – and the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 is known as the pioneer era for aviation, as research…
Traces of the First World War are often seen in terms of trenches, battlefields, and cemeteries, but the soldiers caught up in this conflict left more subtle testimonies to their presence. Graffiti ranging from pencilled names to patriotic artistry provide powerful and personal glimpses of the combatants, as David Crossland reveals.
This image shows a huge crowd of German soldiers captured by British forces during the Battle of Amiens on 27 August 1918, less than three months before Armistice Day. Taken at the town of Abbeville, well behind the frontline, the…
Put your military history knowledge to the test with our competition.
New research has been charting the wrecks of ships lost during Operation Dynamo, the Allied evacuation from Dunkirk in the summer of 1940. Historic England and its French counterpart, Drassm, carried out a survey of 30 wrecks in the waters…
Review by AB Almost every village in the Hauts-de-France region is home to a quarry, dug centuries ago as a source of limestone for their houses and churches, and often used as hiding places in times of trouble over the…
On 4 May 1917, the entrance to the tunnel on the Chemin des Dames collapsed following French shelling.
The events of late May and early June 1940 have long been the stuff of patriotic British legend, celebrated in classic war movies (most recently Christopher Nolan’s 2017 blockbuster), and hailed by Winston Churchill as a ‘miracle of deliverance’. For…
In a new book, Robert Kershaw argues that the lack of a German perspective means we have only a partial understanding of the events of May-June 1940. Here, he explains what his research tells us about a battle that changed the tide of the Second World War.
Wining and dining has long been part of diplomacy. Fine objects from the table tell stories of power, partnerships, and protocol, but also of poisoning, as a new exhibition explores. Geraldine Fabrikant reports.
In this authoritative new history, WWI historian Nick Lloyd goes against the widespread myth of the war of 1914-1918 as one of stupidity and pointlessness. Amid the mud and mire of the trenches, he argues, there was extensive innovation and…
Combat on the Western Front during World War One is justly infamous for its grim lethality. Soldiers on both sides dug deep trenches in the earth to escape murderous enemy fire.
Christmas at the front was about making do. Here, for instance, British soldiers have gathered in a shell hole around a makeshift table. Some are sitting on the ground, others on what appears to be rolled-up sheets of wire.
The Franco-Prussian War overturned the balance of power in Europe
Published 500 years after the event took place, this book serves as a quincentenary celebration of the legendary first meeting between Henry VIII, the English king (r. 1509-1547), and Francis I, the French king (r. 1515-1547). Known as the Field…
Froissant claimed to have born witness, during his travels, to many of the battles that took place during the Hundred Years War, committing all he had seen and heard to writing in the form of elaborate illustrated manuscripts. Seema Syeda examines battlefield scoops through the ages.