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.
Steve Dunn is the author of 15 books, mostly on specific aspects of World War I at sea, from the Dover Patrol to the defence of the Western Approaches. In Spectre of Invasion, he has turned his hand to a…
Reviewing the best military history exhibitions, with Peter Popham.
Researchers from the Warsaw University of Technology and the Jagiellonian University Institute of Archaeology have located a military cemetery containing the remains of soldiers killed during battles in the Carpathian Mountains between 1914 and 1915. The discovery began when the…
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.
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 replaces an earlier monument at Brookwood Military Cemetery honouring some…
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 to Europe in 1917 on America’s entry into the First…
• 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
As thousands died on WWI’s Western Front, a young officer by the name of T E Lawrence was among those fighting a very different war in the Middle East. Here, Nicholas Saunders reveals how a British-backed uprising proved a turning point in history.
It was the greatest Russian triumph of World War I – but the Brusilov Offensive also sowed the seeds of revolution, as David Porter reports.
Put your military history knowledge to the test with our competition.
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…
10 months. Duration of the battle: lasting from 21st February until 18 December 1916. Verdun was the longest conflict of the First World War.
In our special feature for this issue, Graham Goodlad traces first the military career of Philippe Pétain, the French marshal later disgraced for his collaboration with Nazi Germany, and then looks at the battle of Verdun to understand how France’s eventual victory was achieved at such terrible human cost.
In the second part of our special feature, Graham Goodlad examines the epic French defence of the fortress of Verdun in the longest battle of World War I.
Concluding our series on Imperial Germany’s Great War allies, Graham Goodlad examines Bulgaria’s belated and ultimately disastrous entry into the conflict.
REVIEW BY JONATHAN EATON Despite the vast literature on the First World War, there remain important aspects of the conflict that have yet to be fully explored. In recent years, a series of valuable treatises have expanded our understanding of…
Investigations have been carried out at the wreck site of the RMS Titanic’s sister-ship, which was sunk during the First World War. HMHS Britannic was the last of three ‘Olympic-class’ ocean liners built for the White Star Line at Harland…
With Marc DeSantis
Continuing our series on Imperial Germany’s Great War allies, Graham Goodlad reveals how defeat led to the end of an empire.
Eight of Norfolk’s First World War pillboxes have been awarded Grade II- listed status by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, on the advice of Historic England. Among the first pillboxes in Britain, these concrete structures were built between…
• The road to Armageddon: the Central Powers during WWI
• Bombing Venice: inside WWII’s most delicate mission
• The Anarchy: the first English civil war, 1135-1153
• Switching sides: a traitorous history of military turncoats
• Jewel of the Med: the 18th-century struggle for Menorca
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…
In this new mini-series, we examine the wartime record of Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey, and Bulgaria. We begin with a ‘special’ centred on Austria-Hungary’s army, which struggled to make an impression against its Russian, Serbian, and Italian foes. In this first part, Graham Goodlad assesses the performance of the Habsburg army in the war that culminated in the empire’s collapse.
In the second part of our special, Graham Goodlad assesses Austria-Hungary’s failure to achieve victory against Italy.
Infographics: Calum Henderson
‘Good-morning, good morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
These lines from Siegfried Sassoon’s poem ‘The General’ were written in 1917.
With Marc DeSantis
REVIEW BY JONATHAN EATON In recent years, historians have increasingly sought to understand major conflicts from a genuinely global perspective. While this approach has perhaps always been synonymous with the Second World War, where the shape of the conflict was…
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.
A new memorial honouring the contribution of South African military labourers in the First World War has been inaugurated in Cape Town. The monument, which was funded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) and is called the Labour Corps…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history releases.
Reviewing the best military history exhibitions with MHM.