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Tells the "epic tale of the entrapment of HMS Amethyst by the Chinese Communists . . . a good sea story and a look inside the early days of the Cold War" ( Strategy Page).The attack on the British frigate Amethyst on the Yangtze River by Chinese Communists in 1949 made world headlines. There was even more publicity when the ship made a dramatic escape after being trapped ...

This detailed biography brings to life one of the greatest military heroes of WWII—and demonstrates why his contributions were crucial to Allied victory.At the outbreak of the Second World War, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay masterminded the evacuation of some 330,000 members of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. He went on to play a crucial role in the invasion of Sicily and the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion, where he commanded the 7,000 ships...

On 9 January 1972, the mighty Queen Elizabeth, then the largest liner in the world, caught fire in Hong Kong harbour. Watched by millions around the world, she burned live on television, including on Britain's children's programme Blue Peter. Since her retirement in 1968, she had been a tourist attraction in Florida, before her owners went bankrupt and she was sold to become the floating Seawise University. Days before an extensive refit was due to be completed, fires broke out simultaneou...

There have been many books on Victoria Cross heroes but this is the first one to explore the lives of those for whom the greatest accolade did not bring contentment, happiness or lasting fame. Men like the Cheltenham-born Duncan Boyes. The seventeen-year-old Midshipman Boyes won the VC in 1864, carrying the Queen's Colour through withering Japanese fire. Four years later, he would commit suicide by jumping out of a hotel window in Dunedin, New Zealand. How such tragedies unfold – and why –...

Stranded on the beach with the Nazis closing in, the British army managed one of the most unlikely maneuvers in modern military historyIn May of 1940, the remnants of the French and British armies, broken by Hitler’s blitzkrieg, retreated to Dunkirk. Hemmed in by overwhelming Nazi strength, the 338,000 men who gathered on that beach were all that stood between Hitler and Western Europe. Crush them, and the path to Paris and London was clear. And so, unable to retre...

In a work of extraordinary narrative power, filled with brilliant personalities and vivid scenes of dramatic action, Robert K. Massie, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Dreadnought, elevates to its proper historical importance the role of sea power in the winning of the Great War.The predominant image of this first world war is of mud and trenches, barbed wire, machine guns, poison gas, and slaughter. A generation of European manhood ...

The epic of Dunkirk has been told many times, but the numerous accounts from surviving soldiers and sailors were often a blur of fear and fighting with the days mingling into each other, leaving what is, at times, a confusing picture. In this book, adopting a day by day approach, the author provides a clear portrayal of the unfolding drama on the perimeter around Dunkirk, in the port itself and along the beaches to La Panne and the Belgian border.Reports from many of the captains of the ve...

The Kaiser’s Pirates is a dramatic and little-known story of World War I, when the actions of a few men shaped the fate of nations. By1914 Germany had ships and sailors scattered across the globe, protecting its overseas colonies and showing the flag” of its new Imperial Navy. After war broke out on August 4 there was no hope that they could reach home. Instead, they were ordered to attack Britain’s vital trade routes for as long as possible. Under the leadership of a few brillia...

In June 1916, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener set sail from Orkney on a secret mission to bolster the Russian war effort. Just a mile off land and in the teeth of a force 9 gale, HMS Hampshire suffered a huge explosion, sinking in little more than fifteen minutes. Crew and passengers numbered 749; only twelve survived. Kitchener's body was never found.Remembered today as the face of the famous First World War recruitment drive, at the height of his career Kitchener was fêted as Britai...

**"A compelling, dramatic account of the Royal Navy's last great sea battle." —Robert K. Massie, Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times–bestselling author of DreadnoughtMore than a century later, historians still argue about this controversial and misunderstood World War I naval battle off the coast of Denmark. It was the twentieth century's first engagement of dreadnoughts—and while it left Britain in control of the North Sea, both sides claimed victo...

The dramatic story of how a quarter million men were evacuated from the coast of France—and how the British Expeditionary Force fought on.This book, part of the Retreat and Rearguard series, covers the actions of the BEF during the retreat from the Dyle Line to the evacuation points of Dunkirk, Boulogne, Calais, Saint-Valery-en-Caux, and finally the Cherbourg Peninsula.Some of the engagements are relatively well known (Cassell, the Arras counter-attack, and...

The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words - Guardian'For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine-gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways'On 1 July 1916, a continous line of British soldiers climbed out from the tren...