'TOUGH, TOUCHING… IT'S A RIGHT GOOD READ' - DAILY TELEGRAPHAt 16, Mark Time wants to become either a geologist or a Royal Marines Commando. So which does he choose? Despite his love of basalt, he chooses the career that teaches him how to kill... and sh*t in plastic bags.Knowing his weak body will have to shape up to complete thirty weeks of commando training, Mark prepares for the Royal Marines by sleeping in his shed wearing only plastic bags. He braves pain by ordering his mate to attac...

''For the first time in my young military career, those recruitment posters showing lads windsurfing and relaxing on the beach swam into my mind s eye without a trace of irony.'' Young soldier Eddy Nugent can't believe his luck. It's 1991, and he's been posted to tropical Belize - where he works seven hours a week and spends the rest of his time drinking, swimming in the Caribbean and getting to know the local ladies. It's all a far cry from the rainy Manchester streets where h...

“Not every soldier gets to be a hero.”James Marc Ivimey served for 10 years in the British Army, like thousands of others before and since. He enjoyed his time immensely, but there were tears of joy and pain, and of course tedious boredom. Dog Stags & NAAFI Growlers recalls real and vivid stories; the highs and the lows of the day-to-day teeth and bones of barrack-room life.Ivimey provides a unique insight into what it was like to be a rank-and-file soldie...

It's 1985, The Smiths are in the charts and Maggie Thatcher is in No10. Eddy Nugent's in Manchester, he's 16 and he's slowly going out of his mind with boredom. So what does he do? He joins the British Army. Overnight, he leaves the relative sanity of civvie street and falls headlong into the lunatic parallel universe of basic training: a life of press ups, boot polish and drill. Gradually, he finds his feet and settles down to life as a soldier. There's still plenty of pre...

Don Camsell joined the men in black of the SBS in 1974. From the deserts of Oman to the hills of Port Stanley, from the bottom of Gibraltar harbour to the deep, cold, black waters of Loch Long and from the QE2 to the back alleys of Belfast, his new role demanded that Don fought in just about every theatre of war - overt or covert.

In this Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling memoir that 'reads like a thriller', (Joanna Lumley) Colour-Sargent Kailash Limbu shares a riveting account of his life as a Gurkha soldier-marking the first time in its two-hundred-year history that a soldier of the Brigade of Gurkhas has been given permission to tell his story in his own words.In the summer of 2006, Colour-Sargeant Kailash Limbu's platoon was sent to relieve and occupy a police co...

In May 2000 the British nuclear hunter-killer submarine HMS Tireless limped into Gibraltar using emergency propulsion and with her nuclear reactor shut down. Days earlier, while traversing the Straits of Sicily the crew had discovered a crack in one of the nuclear reactor pipes, requiring the immediate shutting down of the reactor to prevent a potential reactor accident, an operation never before conducted on a British submarine at sea. Th e previous six days had been a difficult time for ...

"The finest account I've read on the Selous Scouts . . . Andy Balaam tells it like it was—the fear, the terror, the adrenaline highs of combat in the bush." —Chris Cocks, bestselling author of FireforceFrom the searing heat of the Zambezi Valley to the freezing cold of the Chimanimani Mountains in Rhodesia, from the bars in Port St Johns in the Transkei to the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa, this is the story of one man's fight against terror, and hi...

If you only read one book about our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, read this one.A searing, gripping, action-packed series of 25 amazing tales of courage, by medal-winning soldiers, Royal Marines and RAF men in their own words.These are the bravest of the brave, a collection of modest, honest, proud Brits who showed true grit when it mattered most.* LCoH Andrew Radford CGC ran 70 metres through the Taliban's rocket propelled grenades and machine gun fire to rescue a ...

You do not have to know anything about the police, but it may harm your understanding of the world you live in if you do not read this book.Arresting 10-year-olds for for stealing sweets… Nicking adults for denying the existence of Santa Claus… Investigating Kelly's ex's new girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's ex for sending her a nasty message on Facebook.These are the things the cops spend their time on (as well as fighting drunk thugs, finding toddlers dead in car crashes ...

HUNTER KILLER: a submarine designed to pursue and attack enemy submarines and surface ships using torpedoes.HUNTER KILLERS will follow the careers of four daring British submarine captains who risked their lives to keep the rest of us safe, their exploits consigned to the shadows until now. Their experiences encompass the span of the Cold War, from voyages in WW2-era submarines under Arctic ice to nuclear-powered espionage missions in Soviet-dominated seas....

David Mason graduated from the Australian National University with a law degree and an honours degree. Like those around him, he could easily have settled for a life of share portfolios, good suits, new cars and big houses. But David wanted more – he wanted a challenge, an adventure, something beyond the ordinary that would test him physically and mentally. He looked around to see what he could do. Working in an open-cut mine . . . done that. Running a marathon . . . hmm, not hard enough. ...