Fonthill Media: 289 books

Perhaps one of the most dramatic events of the late Victorian period was the death of General Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon at the hands of the Mahdi’s fanatical warriors as they finally broke their way into the Sudanese city of Khartoum. The story is well-known, recounted in numerous books and celebrated...

The fuse to the First World War was lit in the Balkans where simmering hatreds exploded into violence. Like a string of firecrackers, these hatreds had been fuelled by attacks on the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the previous few years. From 1911-1912, Italy seized Libya. In 1912, the Balkan states united...

The final part of the Lion and the Rose trilogy detailing the TF battalions of the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment in the Great War. Established in August 1914, the 2/5th spent the next thirty months in England perfecting their ability to `form fours'; engaged in almost every sort of training...

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Churchill and Stalin secretly agreed that Britain would infiltrate Soviet agents into occupied Western Europe. Liaison began between the NKVD and the SOE, each country's secret service. Transported in convoys across the Arctic Ocean and...

Would it have been possible for the First World War to be avoided? Steve Cliffe, author of Churchill, Kitchener and Lloyd George: First World Warlords, believes so as did David Lloyd George, Britain’s wartime prime minister. In a bloody act of annihilation that killed over half a million young British...

On 10 May 1940, the French possessed one of the largest air forces in the world. On paper, it was nearly as strong as the RAF. Six weeks later, France had been defeated. For a struggling French Army desperately looking for air support, the skies seemed empty of friendly planes. In the decades that...

Hawker Hurricane: The Multirole Fighter covers the design, development, production and operations of the Hawker Hurricane before, during and after the Second World War. Without the courage of the young men from Britain and the Commonwealth risking their lives to beat the Luftwaffe and forestalling...

Ocean-going U-boats, each one not much longer than four European articulated lorries with up to sixty men inside them, sailed the far-off seas to reap havoc in hot inhospitable waters. The air forces and navies from Britain, the United States and other colonial countries followed to make this a daring...

Spain (1936-9), China (1937 onwards), Mongolia (1939), Finland (1939-40) and France (1939-40) were a testing ground for a new approach to air tactics with western democracies and totalitarian states analysing the resulting lessons. Attention in Air Wars 1920-1939: The Development and Evolution of...

The Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik armoured attack aircraft became an icon of Soviet resistance on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Known throughout the Wehrmacht as the Fleischer ( Butcher ), the Il-2 took a terrible toll on German infantry and armoured vehicles including tanks and assault guns...

The history of Soviet strategic bombers after the Second World War is a fascinating one: from the reverse-engineering of interned American Boeing B-29 bombers into the first Soviet strategic bomber, the Tu-4; to the huge jet and turbo-prop powered aircraft of today's Russian Air Force. This comprehensive...

In 1943, Norwegians formed their third squadron flying under RAF Command: No. 333 Squadron. One flight would fly the trusty Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat whereas the other operated the ultra-modern, wooden wonder: the de Havilland Mosquito. One of the chosen few to fly the Mosquito was 21-year-old...

In the mid-1950s faced with worrying advances in Soviet missile technology, the United States sought to develop an IRBM to act as a stop-gap until the Atlas ICBM became operational. Intense inter-service rivalry followed before the US Air Force gained the upper hand in deploying the missile. The UK,...

An insight into the daily exploits of a fighter pilot during the Cold War and beyond, both from the cockpit and in command Reflections on high level staff meetings, including briefing the Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Heseltine, during the formative years of the Eurofighter project Details...