By the laws of statistics John Lowry should not be here today to tell his story. He firmly believes that someone somewhere was looking after him during those four years. Examine the odds stacked against him and his readers will understand why he hold this view. During the conflict in Malaya and Singapore his regiment lost two thirds of its men. More than three hundred patients and staff in the Alexandra Military hospital were slaughtered by the Japanese he was the only known survivor. Twen...

A biography of the British World War II veteran and Japanese POW camp survivor who went on to create a life-saving device.Countless thousands of men and women around the world have good reason to be thankful that Frank Pantridge survived three and a half years of brutal Japanese captivity. Had he not, they too would in all probability have died too.Taken prisoner at the fall of Singapore in February 1942, Frank was forced to endure appalling deprivation. Cond...

From its invasion of Manchuria through to the Allies' victory in 1945 the Japanese Imperial Army was guilty of widespread atrocities against its enemies and, in particular, the civilians of occupied countries. Massacre, human experimentation, starvation, forced labour and even cannibalism were commonplace during that period. It has been estimated that the number of deaths which resulted from these atrocities range from anything from three to fourteen million people. Using this appalling re...

Last Post Over the River Kwai is the carefully researched account of the experiences of the officers and men of 2nd Battalion The East Surreys during the Second World War.Stationed in Shanghai in the early 1940s, the Battalion was deployed to Malaya and fought gallantly to slow the Japanese advance. After heavy losses the survivors found themselves POWs in Singapore in February 1942 after the humiliating surrender which Churchill described as Britains worst ever military disaster.The next ...

From the author of Children of the Camps, a look at the disturbing activities of the Kempeitai, Japan's feared military and secret police.The book opens by explaining the origins, organization, and roles of the Kempeitai apparatus, which exercised virtually unlimited power throughout the Japanese Empire. Author Mark Felton reveals their criminal and collaborationist networks that extorted huge sums of money from hapless citizens and businesses. They ran the...

Murders, riots, strikes and runaway horses. Midlothian in the 18th and 19th centuries was an interesting place to live.This book introduces the reader to the hard lives of the colliers, the birth of the rural police force and the impact the army had on life in the county south of Scotland's capital city. Highwaymen and grave robbers, footpads and murderers, illicit distillers and murderous poachers; all lived or worked in Midlothian at a time when Scotland was changing from a rural...

This small book looks at some of the strange things that make England unique, starting with the English language itself and looking at concepts such as sports, ghosts and the English love for eccentricity - like the sportsman who rode his horse naked.As well as strange people, the book looks at strange places. For example, there is the canal across Southern England that was dug to keep back Bonaparte's hordes in the invasion that never took place. There is also the impressively mas...

Forty-five gruesome but not gratuitous accounts from the Tudor reign, including the death of Richard III and the botched execution of Mary Queen of Scots.This decidedly darker take on the Tudors, from 1485 to 1603, covers a whole host of horrors from the Tudor reign. Particular attention is paid to the various gruesome ways in which the Tudors despatched their various villains and lawbreakers, from simple beheadings, to burnings and of course the dreaded hanging, d...

Riding With Cochise brings the violent drama of the American Southwest to life through the eyes of the legendary Apache chieftain Cochise and three other tribal leaders, Geronimo, Victorio, and Mangas Coloradas. Relying largely on the oral histories told by relatives of these great warriors as well as personal diaries of others who were involved, veteran author Steve Price takes the reader deep into the Cochise Stronghold, through Massacre Canyon, and across Apache Pass. Y...

This enthralling WWII biography combines a downed B-17 bombardier's unfinished memoir with letters from the French girl who saved his life.Susan Tate Ankeny's father was a World War II veteran bombardier who had bailed from a burning B-17 over Nazi-occupied France in 1944. After he died, she found his unfinished memoir, stacks of envelopes, black-and-white photographs, mission reports, dog tags, and the fake identity cards he used in his escape. Ankeny spent more th...

The acclaimed naval historian presents an authoritative study of how the 1930 Treaty of London influenced warship design in the years before WW2.After the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 put a cap on the construction of capital ships and aircraft carriers, the major navies of the world began building 'treaty cruisers' and other warships that maximized power while abiding the restrictions. As the French and Japanese excelled in this arena, Britain and the United Stat...

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist exposes the sixty-seven US nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands that decimated a people and their land.The most important place in American nuclear history are the Marshall Islands—an idyllic Pacific paradise that served as the staging ground for over sixty US nuclear tests. It was here, from 1946 to 1958, that America perfected the weapon that preserved the peace of the post-war years. It was here—with the 1954 Castle Bravo test...