Bücher veröffentlicht von Naval & Military Press Ltd

Like the Dunkirk campaign in 1940, General Sir John Moore''s advance and retreat from and to Corunna in the early stages of the Peninsular War, was a defeat that has acquired in hindsight all the glorious aura of a famous victory. This was largely due to Moore''s own heroic death at the climax of the campaign; but as Churchill remarked after Dunkirk, ''Wars are not won by evacuations'' and any reader of these revealing diaries will be left in no doubt that Corunna was a calamitous defeat for Britain at the hands of a confident, competent French force. The author of these journals - first published in 1913 - was Captain Alexander Gordon, a Scottish aristocrat - (he was the son of the Earl of Aberdeen) - who wrote them up from notes he made at the conclusion of the campaign when the events he describes so vividly were still fresh in his mind. Although a Hussar, the conditions during the retreat on Corunna were so chaotic that Gordon, as he puts it "Enjoyed opportunities of becoming acquainted with the situation and general movements of the [whole] army". His journals cover the complete campaign - from Moore''s unwise advance into Spain''s interior in an effort to link up with Spanish armies; his encounter with the French under Napoleon himself; and his fighting retreat on the port of Corunna where the Royal Navy was waiting to rescue them. The climax was the pitched battle of Corunna itself, during which Moore was killed by a cannon ball in his chest. The British army of 16,000 succeeded in holding the numerically equivalent French at bay until they had embarked, inflicting 2,000 deaths for their own losses of 900 men. But - as at Dunkirk - they had to abandon much of their equipment o the enemy, including 20,000 muskets. In retrospect it is probably fortunate that by the time of the battle, Napoleon had left Spain to meet an Austrian threat, leaving the battle to the cautious Marshal Soult. This is a valuable eye-witness account of an often overlooked campaign by a perceptive and informed professional observer. IIlustrated with maps and a portrait of the author.

This is an exceptionally detailed and intimate Battalion History of the 18th (Service) Battalion of the Notrhumberland Fusiliers - a unit rapidly raised in the Newcastle area on the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The battlion spent the remainder of the year and 1915 in training in their home area, but like many other units of Kitchener''s New Armies, found themselves at the beginning of 1916 in France preparing for the Somme offensive. The Battalion was used both in a Pioneer role - supplying and maintaining the trench lines - and in a purely combatant role, and was in almost continuous action for the remainder of the war. The Battalion fought at La Boiselle on the Somme and at Arras in April 1917. For the rest of the war it was in the infamous Ypres salient, where it was in the thick of the fighting in March and April 1918 during the German spring offensives. The author of this book, Lt.-Col. John Shakespear, was instrumental in raising the Battalion and commanded it throughout its service on the western front. The volume includes the Battalion''s Embarkation Roll from January 1916; its Roll of Honour; honours and awards and appendices - including one on a Prisoner of War''s experiences. Illustrated with photographs and maps.

The Great Siege of Gibraltar was a decisive event in the long struggle between Britain and France - supported by Spain - for global supremacy in the 18th century. France and Spain took advantage of the American War of Independence to besiege the ''Rock'' - Britain''s great strategic Mediterranean stronghold. The British garrison under General Augustus Elliott, held out for more than three years - repulsing a full-scale assault by 10,000 men backed by floating gun batteries, in September 1782 before the siege was finally lifted the following February. This contemporary book gives a full description of the siege; the names of officers involved on land and sea; together with descriptions of the artillery ordnance. It is illustrated by a map of the Rock and a picture of Spanish galley, together making up ''A clear description of the importance of this valuable fortress to Great Britain''.

The author of this brief but fascinating memoir of being a POW in Germany early in the Great War was an army Chaplain taken prisoner with the Coldstream Guards at the Battle of Landrecies on August 25th 1914. O''Rorke was imprisoned at Torgau, and the fortress of Burg, as well as at Halle and Magdeburg in eastern Germany. He describes the attitude and habits of his German guards, relations with Russian prisoners held alongside him; and his hopes - at first dashed, but eventually fulfilled - to be repatriated. Published soon after his release in 1915, the little book is also charmingly illustrated with drawings of his guards and fellow prisoners, and a plan of the Torgau camp. Fellow prisoners are named throughout. For anyone interested in POW literature, this intriguing volume is an absolute must.

The "61" was the 61st Heavy Artillery Group, mainly composed of ''Derby Men'' - those who voluntarily registered for military duty ahead of conscription midway through the Great War. The 61st served in the Ploegsteert - "Plug street" - area south of the Ypres salient, before being shipped to the Macedonian front, - where malaria-bearing mosquitoes were as much a nuisance as the actual enemy - and then to Palestine where it took part in the battles for Gaza and the advance towards Jerusalem and Damascus. The author of the book was the 61st''s commander, and it is an idiosyncratic and very personal history, whose early chapters are concerned with Oswald''s garrison service in India and the development of artillery from 1880 to the outbreak of war.

This is a record of the adventurers, buccaneers, buffoons and entrepeneurs who cut a swathe through the heart of the Raj, before and during the golden age of British-ruled India. Some are soldiers - like General Jean-Baptiste Ventura - others merchants, doctors like Martin Honigberger and Josiah Halan, antiquarians like Charles Masson, and native Indian rulers like the great Sikh Ranjit Singh. Some seventy names throng the pages of this enthralling - and sometimes frankly eccentric - book. But not all the adventurers represented here are heroes; one, Col. Alexander Gardiner, is exposed by the authors as a complete cad - who posed as a ''very perfect gentle knight'' but who, as an exhaustive study of the records showed, was in reality a ''Prize liar who passed off other men''s adventures as his own'' and was not above ''Undertaking unsavoury duties with which other men entirely refused to have anything to do''. A gamey read, full of the richness of India.

This is an unusual Great War Regimental history in that it was compiled halfway through the conflict, and also contains a huge amount of detail - including biographical notes - on the battalion''s officers and other ranks. It cover all units of the Manchester Regiment - Regulars, Militia; Special Reserve; Territorial and New Army volunteers; and contains Rolls of Honour of Officers, NCOs and men killed from the outbreak of war until early 1916. It is a little book - but a truly vast storehouse of information : names, dates, details - which is a must for anyone interested in the regiment and the war.

Arthur Behrend survived the Great War, and later recorded his experiences in various spheres of the conflict in several successful books - including a harrowing account of the Gallipoli campaign. This book, by contrast, is a compressed story of just nine days - but what days they were - in the chaotic aftermath of the launch of the first - and most crushing - of Ludendorff''s five Spring offensives in 1918. AS adjutant of the 9oth Brigade of the Royal Garrison Artillery, Behrend was in the eye of the storm and records his experiences - and that of his gunner comrades who helped him compile the book with the aid of their own reminisences. Illustrated with photos an maps, this book gives a very clear idea of the impact of the German attack, and the orderly way in which the artillery reacted to it.

William Warre was the spirited scion of one of the great commercial dynasties which helped make Portugal Britain''s oldest ally. Brought up in Oporto, his nature was too fiery to take kindly to the dull business of exporting port, and he gratefully left the family firm to take up a military career after sticking the pigtails of his father''s Portuguese partner to his desk with sealing wax while the man was sleeping off a liquid lunch. Warre returned to his native city as a young staff officer in 1808, and thereafter witnessed most of the major actions of the conflict at close quarters. He took part in Sir John Moore''s winter retreat to Corunna; the storming of the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, personally accepted the sword of the surrendering French commander of Badajoz after the famous siege; and fought at Vimieiro and Salamanca among many other actions. After the latter battle he was given the important task of reorganising the Portuguese Army and was Britain''s liasion man at the Portuguese court in Lisbon. This volume is composed of letters to Warre''s parents. He describes not only the military actions in which he was engaged, but also recounts the gossip among his fellow Staff officers and his own frank observations on the foibles of his Portuguese allies.

Raised on the suggestion of the politician and economic historian H.A.L. Fisher, then Liberal Education Minister, after the idea was mooted by two of his students at Sheffield University, this Service Battalion, after initial training in and around Sheffield saw its first overseas service in Egypt, the Battalion was well and truly ''blooded'' along with so many others, on July 1st 1916 at Serre on the Somme. After service at Vimy Ridge, it returned to the Somme and more hard fighting at Hebuterne. The Battalion helped to defend Arras during the Ludendorff offensives in 1918. Accompanied by photographs, maps and a Roll of Honour, this is a very vivid and evocative history.

So called, from the identity tag worn by soldiers of the Battalion, the Green Triangle tells the story of one of the Territorial Units of the Notts and Derby Regiment, and its service in the Great War which began with helping in the suppression of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. After a spell training on Salisbury Plain, the Battalion arrived in France and fought at Le Verguier on the Somme and the following year at Bullecourt. During the Ludendorff Spring offensives in 1918 it was involved in the defence of Mt. Kemmel.