Military

On 5 March 1936 the prototype Spitfire made its maiden flight. Its creator R.J. Mitchell would not live to see its finest hour.

The Great Siege of Malta by Marcus Bull upends the myth of the Knights of Malta and their last stand of 1565. 

American air raids on Japan’s capital burned the city in March 1945, killing 80,000 people in one night alone. ‘Had to be done’, said the general who ordered it. 

The Price of Victory: A Naval History of Britain: 1815-1945 by N.A.M. Rodger looks above decks for the story of the modern Royal Navy.

British soldiers fighting in the American Revolutionary War were unprepared for the terrain awaiting them across the Atlantic. Many thought that America was determined to destroy them; some felt it had succeeded.

‘What is the most common misconception about my field? That the history of war is the same as military history.’

In listening to the war’s loudest voices, Crimean Quagmire: Tolstoy, Russell and the Birth of Modern Warfare by Gregory Carleton drowns out the diversity of opinion.

What happened to the French airmen in the Second World War who bombed France to help liberate it?

As the Ottoman Empire crumbled, the Greek and Armenian quarters of Smyrna were set ablaze on 13 September 1922 by the vengeful Turkish army.

Shipwrecks are an easily overlooked material legacy of the Second World War, but they are rising to the surface as diplomatic issues.