The ballots have been cast, the votes have been counted, and we are delighted to announce the winners of the MHM Book Awards. We curated a list of 2021’s best military history titles, and asked you, our readers, to vote for your favourite. Our selection included some of the best-researched, most-insightful, and most-readable titles reviewed and featured in the magazine over the last year. The full list of winners is given below!
This year’s awards are sponsored by Thomas Del Mar Ltd, one of the world’s leading auctioneers of antique arms, armour, and militaria, which has held specialist sales within this field since 2005. Since 2017, the company has been working as part of Olympia Auctions, London’s specialist valuers and auctioneers. For more information, please visit the website www.olympiaauctions.com/departments/arms-armour/.
MHM Book of the Year
GOLD Award
At Close Range: life and death in an artillery regiment, 1939-45
Peter Hart, Profile Books
The direct experience of gunners has long been a neglected aspect of World War II history. We have had plenty on life in a tank unit, or a fighter squadron, but there is a sense in which the role of the artillery has been seen as more mundane, perhaps less glamorous. Peter Hart addresses the imbalance with this tribute to an individual regiment. His book is also an important contribution to the history of artillery during the period.
SILVER Award
The Reckoning: the defeat of Army Group South, 1944
Prit Buttar, Osprey Publishing
The Eastern Front remains the forgotten child of Western histories of the Second World War. Yet, as Prit Buttar argues in The Reckoning, the conflict here was existential. Two nations, with diametrically opposed ideologies, each fought not just for victory, but for the complete extinction of the other. His well-argued thesis is that 1944 was the pivotal year in hostilities between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht.
BRONZE Award
The Pathfinders: the elite RAF force that turned the tide of WWII
Will Iredale, Ebury Publishing
‘The Pathfinders are the aces of Bomber Command,’ a British newspaper wrote in 1944. This well-written book tells the remarkable story of an extraordinary team of aviators and their support personnel who – to quote the book’s subtitle – turned the tide of the RAF’s bombing campaign over occupied Europe.
