MHM Book Awards 2026
The ballots have been cast, the votes counted, and we are delighted to announce the winners of the MHM Book Awards. We curated a list of 2025’s best military history titles, and asked you, our readers, to vote for your…
18th & 19th Century
Letters shed new light on the Napoleonic Wars
The National Army Museum has obtained three important archival collections containing soldiers’ first-hand accounts of the Napoleonic Wars. The first is an account of the Waterloo campaign by Lieutenant and Captain Henry Weyland Powell. In it, he details events from…
Military mass graves unearthed in the Czech Republic
Archaeologists have discovered four military mass graves from the 18th and 19th centuries during rescue excavations in advance of the construction of the D11 highway between the towns of Jaroměř and Trutnov in the Czech Republic. The first mass grave…
Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century
REVIEW BY CAMPBELL PRICE This book takes as its subject a relatively unusual theme: books written about Egypt. But it is one that will probably interest Egyptophiles because many of us are avid collectors of books! As the author makes…
The road to independence
In our latest four-part series, marking the 250th anniversary of US independence, Fred Chiaventone examines first the genesis of America’s Revolutionary War, how discontent exploded into open warfare, and then traces the history of a conflict whose repercussions are still being felt 250 years on.
A very bloody summer: The American Revolution: Part 2 – a game of cat and mouse
In the second part of our series, Fred Chiaventone looks at how the conflict escalated as the two sides struggled to gain the upper hand.
The American Revolution by numbers
£133 million - Britain's national debt after the Seven Years War. This enormous deficit prompted the introduction of unpopular new taxes in North America.
Ian Knight
The winner of MHM’s 2025 Book of the Year award on redcoats, distant battlefields, and the film that started it all.
Napoleon’s turncoats: The generals who turned traitor to revolutionary France
The French Revolution was a turbulent era of shifting loyalties, during which even humbly born soldiers could rise to the top, as Nigel Jones reveals in the final part of his series on treachery.
Mitchell: Father of the Spitfire
REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD The Supermarine Spitfire has received more attention in print than almost any other aircraft in history, but relatively little has been written about the life of its designer, R J Mitchell. His son, the late Gordon…
MHM 148 Competition
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Switching sides: Military turncoats, a traitorous history
In the second part of his series on military turncoats, Nigel Jones profiles more commanders who changed allegiance, from Benedict Arnold to Friedrich Paulus.
MHM 147 Competition
Put your military history knowledge to the test with our competition.
Jewel of the Med: The 18th-century struggle for Menorca
Edmund West traces the history of the small island with an outsized natural harbour that played a critical role in the battle for naval superiority in the Mediterranean.
No More Napoleons: How Britain managed Europe from Waterloo to World War I
REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD Andrew Lambert has earned a reputation as the leading naval historian of his generation with a series of books on Nelson, the Anglo-American War of 1812-1814, and the Crimean War. In 2018, his Seapower States chronicled…
A new way of war: The road to Appomattox – Part 4: Technological revolution
In the final part of our series on the American Civil War, Fred Chiaventone examines the impact of devastating new weaponry and technology that emerged courtesy of the Industrial Revolution.
War Classics – The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783
Nick Spenceley reconsiders Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History.
MHM Book Awards 2025
The ballots have been cast, the votes counted, and we are delighted to announce the winners of the MHM Book Awards. We curated a list of 2024’s best military history titles, and asked you, our readers, to vote for your…
Newhaven Fort
Reviewing the best military history exhibitions with Carly Jones.
Chain of Fire: campaigning in Egypt and the Sudan, 1882-1898
REVIEW BY PATRICK MERCER If, as a youngster, you enjoyed those wonderful films Khartoum, The Four Feathers and Young Winston, you were not alone. I sat as transfixed as the spear that skewered General Gordon, as the bayonets that shimmered…
The Battle of Poltava: 8 July 1709
Stephen Roberts analyses the battle that established Russia as a major European power.
The making of Russia
In our special feature, Stephen Roberts examines first the life of Peter the Great, a pivotal figure in Russian history, then looks in detail at the Battle of Poltava that established Russia for the first time as a major power on the European stage.
MHM 145 Competition
Put your military history knowledge to the test with our competition.
A long shadow: The road to Appomattox – Part 3: 1864-1865
In the third part of our series on the American Civil War, Fred Chiaventone traces the conflict’s bloody final months.
Master and commander
In the final part of our occasional series on the rise of Britain’s imperial navy, Graham Goodlad reviews the remarkable career of Admiral George Anson.
Researchers turn to AI to investigate lives of Civil War sailors
A new research project is using artificial intelligence to uncover the stories of Union sailors, or ‘bluejackets’, during the American Civil War. The study is the result of a collaboration between the universities of Sheffield and Northumbria. It aims to…
From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning points of the Revolutionary War
REVIEW BY FRED CHIAVENTONE The American Revolutionary War of 1775 to 1783 had plenty of ‘turning points’, as might be the case with any war that lasted for the best part of eight years, but have they not all been…
Military History Matters 144
• American Apocalypse: the Civil War, 160 years on
• Napoleon’s downfall: the end of the affair
• Endgame WWII: why was crossing the Rhine so easy?
• Seizing the crown: Henry IV’s rise to power
• Race for the skies: William Robinson Clarke
The Price of Victory: A Naval History of Britain 1815-1945
REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD Nicholas Rodger began his monumental history of British sea power, tracing its development from Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the Second World War, almost three decades ago. The second volume, which took the story from…
War Classics – The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo
Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy’s The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World was so significant a book in its day that it would have sat in the libraries of middle-class households alongside the Bible, Shakespeare’s Complete Works, and Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Napoleon’s Undefeated Marshal: Louis Davout and the Art of Leadership
REVIEW BY ANDRÉ VAN LOON To start with what this book is not: Martin Sullivan, a lecturer in business and previously an investment banker, does not give us a straightforward biography of Louis-Nicolas Davout, Duke of Auerstädt and Prince of…
The end of the affair
In the final part of our series on Napoleon Bonaparte, Graham Goodlad examines the reasons for his decline and eventual defeat.
Turning point: The road to Appomattox – Part 2: 1863
Fred Chiaventone reveals how Abraham Lincoln was forced to reorganise his forces, hoping for better results after a series of stunning reversals.
The Civil War by numbers
Infographics: Calum Henderson / Images: Wikimedia Commons
Once upon a time in America
In our Special Feature for this issue, and over the next two editions of MHM, historian Fred Chiaventone marks the 160th anniversary of the war’s end by tracing the long and painful road to Appomattox – from Southern secession to final surrender.
A victory of significance: The Battle of Plassey, 23 June 1757
Stephen Roberts analyses the engagement that helped launch Britain’s empire in India.