Martin Mace: 26 books

The fighting in the Gallipoli or Dardanelles campaign began in 1915 as a purely naval affair undertaken partly at the instigation of Winston Churchill, who, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had entertained plans of capturing the Dardanelles as early as September 1914. It was the Royal Navy that bore...

Dispatches in this volume include those relating to the sinking of the German battleship Graf Spee in the Battle of the River Plate in 1939, the loss of the battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in the Far East, the sinking of the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst in 1943, the attack on...

At 18.57 hours on Sunday, 26 May 1940, the Admiralty issued the directive which instigated the start of Operation Dynamo. This was the order to rescue the British Expeditionary Force from the French port of Dunkirk and the beaches surrounding it. The Admiralty believed that it would only be able to...

Germany's attempts to build a battleship fleet to match that of the United Kingdom, the dominant naval power on the 19th-century and an island country that depended on seaborne trade for survival, is often listed as a major reason for the enmity between those two countries that led to the outbreak...

Despatches in this volume include those covering the Battle of Matapan in 1941, Fleet Air Arm operations in 1940, the Battle of Sirte in 1942, the action with the Italian Fleet off Calabria (Central Mediterranean) in 1940, the engagement between British and Italian forces off Cape Spartivento (Central...

Despatches in this volume include that on the Conquest of Sicily from 10 July 1942 to 17 August 1943 by Field-Marshall Viscount Alexander of Tunis; the despatch on the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, by Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew B. Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean; despatch on...

From the moment the German army moved quietly into Luxemburg on 2 August 1914, to the Armistice on 11 November 1918, the fighting on the Western Front in France and Flanders never stopped. There were quiet periods, just as there were the most intense, savage, huge-scale battles.

The war on the...

The Middle East Command in the Second World War covered a vast region, stretching across Egypt, Libya, Malta, Palestine and Transjordan, Cyprus, Sudan, Eritrea, most of Syria and a small part of Iraq, and included some forty different languages. At one point it also oversaw operations in Greece, Kenya and...

Despatches in this volume include that on the Far East between October 1940 and December 1941, by Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham; the despatch on operations in Hong Kong between 8 and 25 December 1941, by Major-General C.M. Maltby, General Officer Commanding British Troops in China; the...

The events at Rorke's Drift, the iconic defence of a mission station by a small force of British and colonial troops, were immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu. In January 1879, a small garrison of just over 150 British and colonial troops successfully defended the mission against a force of 3,000 to...

Despatches in this volume include that on the Battle of Britain, and air fighting 1940-1941, by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh C.T. Dowding, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Fighter Command, Air Operations by Fighter Command between November 1940 and the end of December 1941, the anti-aircraft defence...

The Battle of Hastings is the most defining event in English history. As such, its every detail has been analysed by scholars and interpreted by historians. Yet one of the most fundamental aspect of the battle the place upon which it was fought has never been seriously questioned, until now. Could...