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When Curt Zoller compiled his Annotated Bibliography of Works about Sir Winston Churchill (1) in 2004, the number of books about Britain’s best-known prime minister was close to 700.
Clive Emsley’s project seeks to frame the intersection of crime and military service in multiple ways and contexts. These include the relationship between wartime service and offending; the comparison of military and civilian crime rates in both war and peacetime; and the changing perceptions of soldiers held by Britons in the 20th century.
Paul A. Gilje, Professor of United States History at the University of Oklahoma and renowned expert on the history of common people on the waterfront in early America (1), argues in his recently published book on the War of 1812 that the U.S. declared war against Great Britain in 1812 in defense of neutral rights and the safety of American sailors.
This review was written in early June, and coincided with the anniversary of D-Day. The annual commemoration of this event, accompanied this year by new television documentaries as well as the replaying of iconic films, is yet another reminder of the important place the Second World War still occupies in British culture as well as history.
‘It is astonishing’, states Panikos Panayi in the opening sentence of his monograph, ‘that almost a century after the outbreak of the First World War, no academic study has yet appeared upon the experiences of German prisoners of war in Britain’ (p. 1).
The historical literature on Afghanistan and the various armed conflicts fought on its soil has greatly increased in recent years, due to the tragic events following the American-led invasion of the country in October 2001.
As medieval English kings go, William I has been well-served by his modern English biographers. D.C.
The question of the nature of allegiance in the English Civil Wars has been a perennial issue for at least three generations of professional academics.
Military men, as histories of the Royal Navy in particular have shown, tend to be interested in controlling sanitary conditions. Among seamen, maintaining health was always essential otherwise ships could not remain at sea. The main theme of Dr. Katherine Foxhall’s interesting book is voyages to Australia.
This is an updated version (December 2014) of a piece originally published in 2013, which extends the coverage of the review to include some more recent works on 1812.