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Normandy: The Sailors' Story A Naval History of D-Day and the Battle of France by Nick Hewitt Yale, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 460 In December last year, the last surviving D-Day [...]

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Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine by David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts William Collins, [pounds sterling]26, pp. 540 Victory to Defeat: The British Army 1918-1940 by Richard [...]

The Eagle and the Lion: Rome, Persia and an Unwinnable Conflict by Adrian Goldsworthy Head of Zeus, [pounds sterling]35, pp. 650 History doesn't have to be 'useful' to be compelling--witness, [...]

Allan Mallinson Peace, War and Whitehall: A Memoir by Field Marshal Lord Guthrie Bloomsbury, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 288 A headline in the Mail on Sunday, taken up eagerly by the [...]

The Sinking of the Bliicher: The Battle of Drobak Narrows, April 1940 by Geirr Haarr and Tor Jorgen Melien Greenhill Books, [pounds sterling]29.95, pp. 432 In the conclusion to this [...]

The Path to Peace: Walking the Western Front Way by Anthony Seldon Atlantic Books, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 350 This profound and emotion-laden book ends, as did the first world war, [...]

Sir: Andrew Roberts is correct in every detail about the National Army Museum ('Notes on', 25 June). The expensively refurbished museum of five years ago was a monstrous exercise in [...]

Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost the War by Jonathan Dimbleby Viking, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 620 Barbarossa: And the Bloodiest War in History by Stewart Binns Wildfre, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 400 The [...]

African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914-1918 by Robert Gaudi Hurst, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 436 What's going on with book reviews? Here is [...]

At Close Range: Life and Death in the Artillery Regiment 1939-45 by Peter Hart Profile Book, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 575 'Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,/ But he'll [...]

Operation Jubilee: Dieppe, 1942 The Folly and the Sacrifice by Patrick Bishop Viking, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 320 In my mother's final days we had a long conversation about the second [...]

A Peer Among Princes: The Life of Thomas Graham, Victor of Barrosa, Hero of the Peninsular War by Philip Grant Pen & Sword, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 240 Why does [...]

Sir: There was an egregious error in my review of Peter Hart's At Close Range: Life and Death in the Artillery Regiment 1939-45 (Books, 16 January). Owing to my poor [...]

Rorke's Drift and Isandlwanaby Ian BeckettOUP, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 225On 22 January last year, the entrance whiteboard at London Underground's Dollis Hill carried a brief factual statement:A female passenger [...]

This Dark Business: The Secret War Against Napoleon by Tim Clayton Little Brown, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 448 Laws and sausages, we know, are better not seen in the making; [...]

Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwell William Collins, 25 £, pp. 348, ISBN 9780007539383 Spectator Bookshop, 20 £ Waterloo: Four Days That [...]

MI9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two by Helen Fry Yale, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 327 War in the Shadows: Resistance, Deception and [...]

It is always a delight to drive the country roads of Hampshire to see the man known throughout the army simply as 'Dwin'--Field Marshal Lord Bramall. Until quite recently, I [...]

Sir: Mark Bostridge pays me a great compliment in saying that my Fight to the Finish is 'notable for its clarity, and anyone requiring a digestible narrative summary of the [...]

Praetorian: The Rise and Fall of Rome's Bodyguard by Guy de la Bedoyere Yale, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 344 The history of an army is essentially the history of its [...]

Boots on the Ground: Britain and Her Army Since 1945 by General Sir Richard Dannatt Profile, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 391 It's not immediately obvious, but the silhouette on the [...]

The article recounts the politics surrounding military planning by Great Britain to aid its allies France and Belgium against military aggression by Germany prior to World War I, focusing particularly on the plans of Home Secretary Winston Churchill. Notable people also discussed include Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, First Sea Lord Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Wilson, Director of Military Operations General Henry Wilson, and foreign secretary Edward Grey. Other topics include the second Moroccan crisis of 1911, the British Expeditionary Force, and the Entente Cordiale, a series of accords between France and Great Britain.

From Byron to Bin Laden: A History of Foreign War Volunteers by Nir Arielli Harvard, 27.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 295 What's the point of a cover if not to judge [...]

Shooting Up: A History of Drugs in Warfare by Lukasz Kamienski C. Hurst & Co, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 400, ISBN 9781849045513 'Of all civilisation's occupational categories, that of soldier [...]

Sir: Ralph Dunn says (Letters, 12 August) that my piece 'A Fighting Chance' (5 August) is a plea to maintain the size of the army at the expense of the [...]

'We remember it not only for the rain that fell, the mud that weighed down the living and swallowed the dead, but also for the courage and bravery of the [...]

Culloden: Scotland's Last Battle and the Forging of the British Empire by Trevor Royle Little Brown, 25 £, pp. 409, ISBN 9781408704011 What a wretched lot the Stuarts were, the [...]

Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the 20th Century by Alistair Horne Weidenfeld, 25 £, pp. 304, ISBN 9780297867623 Spectator Bookshop, 21.25 £ Sir Alistair Horne, like that other great [...]

After Hitler: The Last Days of the Second World War in Europe by Michael Jones Publisher, 25£, pp. 400, ISBN 9781848544949 Spectator Bookshop, 20 £ 'If the war is lost, [...]

High Command: British Military Leadership in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars by Christopher L. Elliott Hurst, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 288, ISBN 9781849044608 Spectator Bookshop, 20.00 [pounds sterling] The author [...]

Anatomy of a Campaign: The British Fiasco in Norway, 1940 by John Kiszely Cambridge Military Histories, 34.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 390 Amid the shambles that was the Anglo-French campaign in [...]

Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness by Craig Nelson Weidenfeld, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 544 On 7 December 1941, without declaration of war, 350 Japanese carrier-borne aircraft struck at the [...]

The article discusses the division of the British army in 1914 into six divisions of regulars and 14 divisions of territorial volunteers, focusing on how British Major General Sir Henry Wilson deployed the troops during World War I. Other topics include the use of conscription throughout European countries, Britain's need for a larger army to win World War I, and the state of British foreign affairs prior to World War I.

THE ADVENTURES OF COLONEL DAFFODIL by Major-General Sir Roy Redgrave Pen & Sword, £19.99, pp. 208, ISBN 9781844155255 In 2000, in these pages, I reviewed a volume of reminiscences by [...]

THE WAR FOR ALL THE OCEANS : FROM NELSON AT THE NILE TO NAPOLEON AT WATERLOO by Roy Adkins and Lesley Adkins Little, Brown, £20, pp. 534, ISBN 0316728373 . [...]

COBRA II: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor Atlantic Books, £25, pp. 603, ISBN 1843543524 . £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) [...]

THE ROAD TO RIVOLI: NAPOLEON'S FIRST CAMPAIGN by Martin Boycott-Brown Cassell, 20 £, pp. 560, ISBN 0304353051 I once heard of a vicar who, as the end of Lent approached, [...]