Cover Story
Hastings revisited As the Bayeux Tapestry returns to England for a major new exhibition, Edmund West assesses the latest thinking about 1066 and all that. Features
From biplane to B-52 In the second part of our special feature, Graham Goodlad examines the changes in design and technology that underpinned the 20th-century transformation of US airpower. 
US airpower Onwards and upwards a timeline tracing the developing fortunes and many incarnations of America's air force in the 2oth century. 
American thunderbolt In the first part of our special feature, Graham Goodlad charts the development of America’s air-arm from its earliest beginnings, while in our second article he focuses on the hardware… 
The Kaiser’s secret weapons From ‘Big Bertha’ to exploding motor boats, Germany’s military engineers were the source of much innovation during the First World War, as David Porter explains. 
Seizing the state: The curious history of the military coup They were once a common method of changing governments around the world. But, as Nigel Jones explains, coups have fallen from fashion in the 21st century. 
‘Destroy the foreigners’: The Boxer Rebellion, November 1899-September 1901 At the turn of the 20th century, a violent uprising swept northern China, and an international expedition was sent to rescue those trapped in Peking’s diplomatic quarter. Stephen Roberts tells… News
New Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial at Brookwood cemetery The newly constructed Brookwood 1914-1918 Memorial to the Missing was inaugurated by HRH The Princess Royal, President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), on 9 June 2026. This memorial… 
Cannons from the American Revolution go on display A collection of large cannons from the American Revolutionary War has returned to Savannah, Georgia, after several years of conservation work, as part of a project led by the US… 
Hidden coins discovered beneath foremast of HMS Victory Six coins have been recovered from beneath the foremast of Nelson’s famous flagship during an ongoing conservation project. Over several nights in April, a 750-tonne crane was used to remove… 
Divers find WWI wreck of US Coast Guard cutter A team of divers believe they have identified the wreck of the USCGC Tampa off the English coast. The vessel was one of six United States Coast Guard cutters sent… Views
War Classics – Inherit the truth: The Cellist of Auschwitz Comment When Anita Lasker came to Britain in March 1946, 80 years ago, having survived Auschwitz and having been liberated at death’s door from Belsen, she found that no one wanted… 
Sir Lawrence Freedman People The academic, historian, and author on war stories, shifting interests, and some memorable moments. 
MHM 153 Competition Competitions Put your military history knowledge to the test with our competition and crossword. 
Beauty and Destruction: wartime London in art Museum, What's on Reviewing the best military history exhibitions, with Peter Popham. Reviews
War on Film – World War II with Tom Hanks Taylor Downing reviews the latest film and television releases. 
Hammer of the Gods Don Hollway’s account of the life of the Norse warlord Olaf Tryggvason (king of Norway in the years c.995-1000) covers a period of momentous social and religious change in the… 
Tojo: the rise and fall of Japan’s most controversial World War II general Hideki Tojo was Japan’s most important policymaker of WWII. As detailed in Gary Bass’s 2023 study Judgment at Tokyo, he was the highest official to face the death penalty at… 
SAS: Great Escapes 5 War correspondent, film producer, and writer: many MHM readers will already know Damien Lewis’s work. In his latest book about British Special Forces, he presents five more hair-raising accounts of… 
Why Barbarossa Failed: Germany and Russia in the Second World War On the face of it, Operation Barbarossa – Nazi Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union – is straightforward to understand. Germany was at first strikingly successful, then faltered, and… 
Siege in Ireland 1641-53 Between 1639 and 1653, the whole of the British Isles was engulfed by civil war. Despite popular opinion, however, it was not pitched battles that dominated the fighting, but sieges.… 
Beauty and Destruction: wartime London in art Reviewing the best military history exhibitions, with Peter Popham. 
From the editor
This autumn, the British Museum in London is playing host to one of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions of recent decades, as the Bayeux Tapestry makes the short hop from its permanent home in Normandy, and returns to England for the first time in nearly 1,000 years.
But as history lovers and British Museum members jostle for early access tickets, exciting new research is also coming to light that challenges some of our longest-held beliefs – both about the Tapestry itself and about the world changing events that inspired it.
In our cover story, Edmund West reveals the latest thinking about the Norman Conquest. He talks to Tom Licence, the author of an acclaimed new biography of Harold Godwinson, the doomed English king, as he attempts to separate fact from fiction and to take stock of what we really know (as opposed to simply what we think we know) about 1066 and all that.
Elsewhere, in a two-part special feature, Graham Goodlad analyses the rise of American airpower, from perilous early beginnings to Cold War dominance, as he looks at the remarkable people and amazing machines that helped the country to make the leap from biplane to B-52.
Also in this issue, Stephen Roberts considers the Boxer Rebellion, the violent anti-imperialist uprising that swept through northern China at the turn of the 20th century; while military technology expert David Porter uncovers the stories behind some of the ground-breaking innovations made by German military engineers during World War I – from ‘Big Bertha’ and the ‘Paris Gun’ to torpedo gliders and exploding motor boats.
Finally, Nigel Jones examines the curious history of the military coup, and explains why this brutal but once common method of changing governments around the world appears to have fallen from fashion in recent years.
We hope you enjoy the issue!
LAURENCE EARLE
