Here are 100 books that Churchill and the Dardanelles fans have personally recommended if you like
Churchill and the Dardanelles.
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I am a British naval historian and winner of the Sir Julian Corbett Prize for Naval History. My main area of interest is the Anglo-German naval race before the First World War. I have written numerous books on this topic including Rum, Sodomy, Prayers, and the Lash Revisited: Winston Churchill and Social Reform in the Royal Navy, 1900-1915 (2018);The Naval Route to the Abyss: The Anglo-German Naval Race, 1895-1914(2015); The Royal Navy and the German Threat, 1901-1914 (2012); Naval Intelligence from Germany(2007); andSpies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War (2006).
This book genuinely changes our understanding of British defence policy before the First World War. It is often assumed that the German challenge to British naval supremacy before 1914 was a mirage and that fears that Germany might launch an invasion of the British Isles were simple scaremongering. The reality was different. The Royal Navy may have been bigger and stronger than its German counterpart, but its task was harder and its leaders were not confident that they could prevent German soldiers from landing on British soil. Based on first-rate research, this book explains why.
The Fear of Invasion presents a new interpretation of British preparation for War before 1914. It argues that protecting the British Isles from invasion was the foundation upon which all other plans for the defence of the Empire were built up. Home defence determined the amount of resources available for other tasks and the relative focus of the Army and Navy, as both played an important role in preventing an invasion. As politicians were reluctant to prepare for offensive British participation in a future war, home defence became the means by which the government contributed to an ill-defined British 'grand'…
Military history has always fascinated me. I grew up in Britain with my parents’ tales of service in the Second World War on land, sea, and in the air. The First World War saw the zenith of British sea power and was an obvious draw. The scale and scope of the fighting were huge, and I’ve been researching the naval war in depth for over thirty years. The high levels of literacy of the combatants mean that it is also possible to gain deep insights into their experiences. This makes for stories I'm passionate about discovering as a reader and telling as an author. I hope this list helps you discover them too.
This is a five-volume history focusing on the Anglo-German naval rivalry from its origins in 1904 to the ultimate demise of the Imperial German Fleet in 1919. This is history writing at its epic best.
Marder’s approach to history is even handed and avoids partisanship. His research is monumental is scale and he developed a network of relationships with many of the key figures in the story. The result is an incredibly well researched and informed history of the naval war, with great depth of insight, all written in an approachable style.
A true classic of naval literature that is a joy to read and is unlikely to ever be surpassed.
Arthur Marder's critically acclaimed five volume series, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, represents one of the finest contributions to the literature of naval history since the work of Alfred Mahan. These new editions of the series are published with a new introduction by Barry Gough, distinguished Canadian maritime and naval historian, that provide an assessment of the importance of Marder's work and anchors it firmly amongst the great naval narrative histories of this era.
"His naval history has a unique fascination. To unrivalled mastery of sources he adds a gift of simple narrative . . . He is beyond…
I am a British naval historian and winner of the Sir Julian Corbett Prize for Naval History. My main area of interest is the Anglo-German naval race before the First World War. I have written numerous books on this topic including Rum, Sodomy, Prayers, and the Lash Revisited: Winston Churchill and Social Reform in the Royal Navy, 1900-1915 (2018);The Naval Route to the Abyss: The Anglo-German Naval Race, 1895-1914(2015); The Royal Navy and the German Threat, 1901-1914 (2012); Naval Intelligence from Germany(2007); andSpies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War (2006).
A lot of ink has been spilt on why the Royal Navy was unable to overpower the German fleet at the battle of Jutland. Some focus on flaws in equipment and ship design, others on flaws in leadership and tactics, others still on poor fighting methods. This book examines the subject in the round and shows, contrary to received wisdom, that in gunnery at least, the Royal Navy entered the battle with the instruments best suited to its needs. Such failures as there were – and there were many – were largely down to individual command decisions on the day.
This new book reviews critically recent studies of fire control, and describes the essentials of naval gunnery in the dreadnought era.
With a foreword by Professor Andrew Lambert, it shows how, in 1913, the Admiralty rejected Arthur Pollen's Argo system for the Dreyer fire control tables. Many naval historians now believe that, consequently, British dreadnoughts were fitted with a system that, despite being partly plagiarised from Pollen's, was inferior: and that the Dreyer Tables were a contributory cause in the sinking of Indefatigable and Queen Mary at Jutland.
This book provides new and revisionist accounts of the Dreyer/Pollen controversy, and…
I am a British naval historian and winner of the Sir Julian Corbett Prize for Naval History. My main area of interest is the Anglo-German naval race before the First World War. I have written numerous books on this topic including Rum, Sodomy, Prayers, and the Lash Revisited: Winston Churchill and Social Reform in the Royal Navy, 1900-1915 (2018);The Naval Route to the Abyss: The Anglo-German Naval Race, 1895-1914(2015); The Royal Navy and the German Threat, 1901-1914 (2012); Naval Intelligence from Germany(2007); andSpies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War (2006).
Underwater weapons of all types have had a major influence on naval warfare in the twentieth century. Despite this, studies of them to date have not been all they might be either in terms of quantity or quality. Richard Dunley rectifies this in respect of the mine with a major evaluation of its place in Royal Navy thinking and planning in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century. As a result, this is an important book and a major contribution to the literature.
This book examines Britain's complex relationship with the mine in the years 1900-1915. The development of mine warfare represented a unique mix of challenges and opportunities for Britain in the years before the First World War. The mine represented the antithesis of British maritime culture in material form, and attempts were made to limit its use under international law. At the same time, mine warfare offered the Royal Navy a solution to its most difficult strategic problem. Richard Dunley explores the contested position occupied by the mine in the attitudes of British policy makers, and in doing so sheds new…
I’ve been fascinated with the ocean starting when I was a kid growing up on the Great Lakes. While I sailed and swam in Lake Erie’s freshwater, I dreamed of and read about oceans. My career as a historian and writer has been dedicated to exploring the human relationship with the ocean, especially the underwater realm so often left out of maritime history and literature. My greatest joy is that other historians have joined my quest. The books I’ve selected include some I used as sources in writing ocean history and others by historians who are themselves plumbing the ocean’s depths.
The title Neptune’s Laboratory invokes knowledge of the oceans through science alongside the equally central role imagination has played in the human relationship with the sea. Antony Adler astutely observes how its mirror-like qualities encouraged scientists, politicians, and the public since the early 19th century to use the ocean to spin utopian fantasies and explore dystopian fears. Most importantly, he reminds readers that our propensity to fathom oceans to project the fate of the human species and our planet offers an important key: imagination could chart a course toward a better future.
An eyewitness to profound change affecting marine environments on the Newfoundland coast, Antony Adler argues that the history of our relationship with the ocean lies as much in what we imagine as in what we discover.
We have long been fascinated with the oceans, seeking "to pierce the profundity" of their depths. In studying the history of marine science, we also learn about ourselves. Neptune's Laboratory explores the ways in which scientists, politicians, and the public have invoked ocean environments in imagining the fate of humanity and of the planet-conjuring ideal-world fantasies alongside fears of our species' weakness and ultimate…
I’m an author, radio broadcaster, journalist, and podcaster. I’ve been in the media for almost 40 years. Oddly, writing came to me very late but it hit me light a lightning bolt when it happened. I researched my Grandfather’s time on the Western Front in WW1 after discovering a letter he wrote to a friend. That was the moment I knew I had to write a book. My career has taken me from rock n roll radio to talkback in Commercial, Public, and now Community radio in Australia. I love what I do, but most of all, I just love telling stories to my audience, whatever the platform.
As a researcher and Historian, L.A. Carlyon was a genius. Gallipoli was a WW1 campaign that failed for the Allies; the brainchild of Winston Churchill and a complete disaster. And yet, it was the first big battle fought by Australians under a National identity and has been written into folklore. Many saw this as the blooding of our nation. What I really loved about this book is that it went into the deep truth about Gallipoli, things I never imagined could have happened, and a land offensive that was never supposed to happen. What we were taught at school was a long way from the truth and it really opened my mind.
'Because it was fought so close to his old home ground, Homer might have seen this war on the Gallipoli Peninsula as an epic. Brief by his standards, but essentially heroic. Shakespeare might have seen it as a tragedy with splendid bit-parts for buffoons and brigands and lots of graveyard scenes. Those thigh bones you occasionally see rearing out of the yellow earth of Gully ravine, snapped open so that they look like pumice, belong to a generation of young men who on this peninsula first lost their innocence and then their lives, and maybe something else as well...'
I’m a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where I teach and write about topics ranging from feminism to World War. I became interested in the history of the Armenian Genocide because my grandmother was a survivor. Other books I’ve written include: Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain; Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide and the Birth of the Middle East and The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide.
This magisterial and sweeping history explains why the Ottomans went to war on the side of the Central Powers and how they failed to achieve victory. It discusses the military confrontations and battlefront traumas that resulted from the decision to go to war against the Allies in 1914 in a highly readable and engaging style.
By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict. Unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was fast-moving and unpredictable, with the Turks inflicting decisive defeats on the Entente in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia,…
Laura A. Macaluso researches and writes about monuments, museums, and material culture. Interested in monuments since the 1990s, the current controversies and iconoclasm (monument removals) have reshaped society across the globe. She works at the intersection of public art and public history, at places such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
Teachable Monuments is an expensive book, but it is also a book useful for integrating the work of scholars with teachers, using monuments to examine and create new meanings from monument culture via curriculum and classroom activities. The book comes after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a seismic event in the United States and abroad which hastened the removals of many Confederate and Columbus monuments, as well as monuments in Europe and beyond.
Monuments around the world have become the focus of intense and sustained discussions, activism, vandalism, and removal. Since the convulsive events of 2015 and 2017, during which white supremacists committed violence in the shadow of Confederate symbols, and the 2020 nationwide protests against racism and police brutality, protesters and politicians in the United States have removed Confederate monuments, as well as monuments to historical figures like Christopher Columbus and Dr. J. Marion Sims, questioning their legitimacy as present-day heroes that their place in the public sphere reinforces.
The essays included in this anthology offer guidelines and case studies tailored for…
I’m a professional explainer of Russia. For over 20 years I’ve been studying the country and trying to understand what makes it (and its leaders and people) so intent on attacking those around it and perceived adversaries further afield. That’s never been more important to understand than today when Ukraine and its soldiers are the only thing preventing Russia from once again rampaging across Europe. These books are ones that have helped me understand one part or several parts of the Russia problem, and I think they’ll be helpful for anybody else who wants to, too.
Another question I permanently get asked as a professional Russia-watcher is what Russia’s own population really thinks about its war on Ukraine and the atrocities committed there.
Surely, people think, if only ordinary Russians knew the truth about what their troops are doing in this unprovoked war of aggression – and how many of them are dying alongside innocent Ukrainian civilians and children – they would turn against the war. That’s why Jade McGlynn’s Russia’s War is such an important book.
Jade spent years researching Russian propaganda, its twisting of history, and the effect on what Russians think – and found, disturbingly, that yes, ordinary Russians really do support the horrors inflicted on Ukraine. It’s a disturbing read but another vital one for understanding what it will take to stop Russia.
In the early hours of 24 February 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. The brutality of the Russian assault has horrified the world. But Russians themselves appear to be watching an entirely different war - one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukrainian foe.
Russia analyst Jade McGlynn takes us on a journey into this parallel military and political universe to reveal the sometimes monstrous, sometimes misconstrued attitudes behind Russian majority backing for the invasion. Drawing on media analysis and interviews with ordinary citizens, officials and foreign-policy elites in Russia and Ukraine, McGlynn…
As a career journalist who has worked in print, online, on the radio and on television, I’ve long been intrigued by the influence of mass media and the vast technological changes in how information is transmitted that have occurred over the course of my career. Burnt out from the daily deadlines and transformed by a chance to work in the Kingdom of Bhutan, I began writing books and gravitate toward the “origin stories” of influential US entities.
Mitchell was the first person hired by NPR when it was first charted in 1970. He was appointed its first producer after the first initial, scattered year of production of its first news program, All Things Considered, which debuted in May, 1971. This is an excellent survey of the early years from the perch of a behind-the-scenes insider and offers to clues about how the network developed.
Public radio stands as a valued national institution, one whose fans and listeners actively support it with their time and their money. In this new history of this important aspect of American culture, author Jack W. Mitchell looks at the dreams that inspired those who created it, the all-too- human realities that grew out of those dreams, and the criticism they incurred from both sides of the political spectrum. As National Public Radio's very first employee, and the first producer of its legendary All Things Considered, Mitchell tells the story of public radio from the point of view of an…
