Field Marshal William Slim stands alongside Montgomery as the outstanding British field commander of World War II. Defeat Into Victory is his classic account of the Burma campaign: a story of retreat, attrition and final hard-fought victory over the Japanese. Told by a commander always at the centre of events, this is a narrative which captures both the high drama and the harsh reality of war.-Print ed.

A career soldier, veteran of both World Wars, and British war hero remembers the campaigns he fought—and his worthy foes.Like most members of the professional military freemasonry, Field Marshal Sir William Slim came to admire "all the soldiers of different races who have fought with me and most of those who have fought against me." Among the most likable of his enemies were the Wazirs of India's Northwest Frontier. In 1920, Slim took part in a retaliatory raid on ...

Like most members of the professional military freemasonry, Field Marshal Sir William Slim came to admire "all the soldiers of different races who have fought with me and most of those who have fought against me." Among the most likable of his enemies were the Wazirs of India's Northwest Frontier. In 1920, Slim took part in a retaliatory raid on an obscure village. It was an unusually easy victory over the canny Wazirs, whom the British took by surprise and escaped from with scant loss. Af...

Field Marshal Viscount Slim (1891-1970) led shattered British forces from Burma to India in one of the lesser-known but more nightmarish retreats of World War II. He then restored his army's fighting capabilities and morale with virtually no support from home and counterattacked. His army's slaughter of Japanese troops ultimately liberated India and Burma.The first edition of Defeat Into Victory , published in 1956, was an immediate sensation selling 20,000 copies within ...

The seminal account of the battle between Montgomery’s Eighth Army and Rommel’s Afrika Corps, amidst the endless harsh wastes of the Western Desert.In 1940, Alan Moorehead was sent to cover the North Africa campaign by the Daily Express, and he followed its dramatic course all the way to 1943. The three books he subsequently wrote about the Desert War – later collected as his ‘African Trilogy’ – were swiftly acclaimed as a classic account of the tussle betw...

A collection of autobiographical stories from an officer in the British Indian Army during World War II.John Randle served with the greatly respected Baluch Regiment of the former Indian Army right through the fiercely fought Burma Campaign, winning a Military Cross, yet on VJ Day he was only some sixty miles from where had started out nearly four years before.Unlike other conventional war memoirs, this book comprises a gratifying number of self-contained s...

One hundred years after the charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade at Beersheba in October 1917...'The Desert Column is based on the diaries that he kept through out the war. Published in 1932, it is one of Idriess' earliest works. Harry Chauvel noted in the foreword that it was the only book of the campaign that to his knowledge was "viewed entirely from the private soldier's point of view"... Idriess served as a sniper with the 5th Australian Light Horse. Enlisting in 1914, he beg...

The spectre of the Great War still haunts us. No other conflict so dramatically illustrates the waste of life, and the slaughter of innocents, as that of 1914-18. And none has so dramatically shaped the modern world: the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the break-up of Empire, the supremacy of America and World War II all stem from the four years of the 'war to end all wars'.Here is the eye-witness chronicle of that war, from the trenches of Flanders to the staff rooms of the...

Originally published in 1937 (and long out of print), this is a gripping, first hand account of a young soldier's experiences in France and Belgium during the First World War.'*In that hour was born in me a fear that lasted throughout the whole winter. It was the dread of dying in the mud, going down in that stinking morass and though dead being conscious throughout the ages. Waves of fear at times threatened to overwhelm me. a little weakness, a little slackening ...

In John Buchan’s second book focusing on the exploits of the ever resourceful Richard Hannay, we find the English secret agent deep behind enemy lines as World War One rages. This time Hannay is tasked by a senior intelligence officer with investigating a possible plan by the Germans to cause a revolt in the Muslim world that threatens Great Britain’s war effort. Aided by some friends, Hannay travels across war-torn Europe to Turkey as he attempts to decipher a cryptic clue that may hold t...

In 1930, the editor of Everyman Magazine requested entries for a new anthology of Great War accounts. The result was a revolutionary book unlike any other of the period; for as Malcolm Brown notes in his introduction 'I believe it might fairly be described as a rediscovered classic'.It was the very first collection to reveal the many dimensions of the war through the eyes of the ordinary soldier and offers heart-stopping renditions of the very first gas attack; aerial dogfights abo...

ONE OF HAY FESTIVAL'S 100 BEST BOOKS WRITTEN BY WOMEN IN THE LAST 100 YEARS.'The most gripping piece of war reportage I have ever read. What a writer! Her observations, mixed with dry humour and compassion, place her at the heart of the conflict and somehow apart from it, as a good historian should be. Remarkable.' Joanna LumleyTrain to Nowhere is a memoir of war seen through the sardonic eyes of Anita Leslie, a funny and ...