The Story of Operation Grapple. On 15th
May, 1957, Vickers Valiant V-Bomber, XD818 captained by Wing
Commander Kenneth Hubbard, 49 Squadron RAF, dropped Britain's
first live thermonuclear bomb at Malden Island in the central
Pacific. The success of the Operation broadcast to the world that
the UK had the resolve and the capability to protect her own
democracy and that of her Commonwealth. It ensured that Britain
maintained her influential positions in the United Nations and
other corridors of world power, and in the ensuing years provide
Britain's deterrent throughout the decades of the Cold War.
The Great War Diaries of Colonel William Spackman edited by the
author's nephew, Anthony Spackman. This edited diary is an
extraordinary personal record of his experiences as the Medical
Officer of an Indian Infantry battalion during the 1914 to 1916
Mesopotamian Campaign. In particular he describes the harrowing
events of the five month siege of Kut and, after the surrender of
the 10,000 strong garrison in April 1916, the hardships of the
1,000 mile forced march to Anatolia in Turkey. As a doctor he
witnessed the suffering the and deaths of many British and Indian
POWs. The book goes on the record life in Turkish captivity.
The story of the Battle of the Ruhr Pocket, April 1945. Two great
Allied Armies were racing toward each other, crushing German
resistance with Berlin as the prize. Ignoring Churchill's warnings
and overruling Motgomery's plans Eisenhower opted to destroy the
remnants of the German armies in the Ruhr leaving the Soviets free
to take Berlin. What drove Eisenhower's decision-making at this
vital time? Was it high level strategy or naked personal ambition?
Noted historian Whiting lays out the facts to reach a possibly
controversial, conclusion.
Opening with the 'predators' - Mussolini, Hitler, Prince
Hirohito of Japan - and moving onto appeasement, the rape of
Poland, Barbarossa, the role of Churchill, and the Holocaust, the
author analyses the moral dimension of the Second World War's most
important moments. He also examines the moral reasoning of
individuals who had to make choices under circumstances difficult
to imagine. Stressing the maxim that the past is used to make
sense of the present world we live in, he takes us right up to
today's war on terror - a war of competing ideas.
New in d/w - 650pp, 5 maps, 36 colour &
b/w illustrations
A magisterial history of the greatest and most terrible event
in history, from one of the finest historians of the Second World
War. Hastings describes the course of events, but focuses chiefly
upon human experience, which varied immensely from campaign to
campaign, continent to continent. The book ranges across a vast
canvas, from the agony of Poland amid the September 1939 Nazi
invasion, to the 1943 Bengal famine, in which at least a million
people died under British rule. There are vivid descriptions of the
tragedies and triumphs of a host of ordinary people, in uniform and
out of it.
New in d/w - 748pp, 20 maps,
45 b/w photos & illustrations
