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71259 DUXFORD AND THE BIG WINGS 1940-45 by Martin Bowman


A pulsating account of the young RAF and American fighter boys who flew Spitfires, Hurricanes, Thunderbolts and Mustangs told through first person accounts from RAF, German and American ‘Eagles’. These are the brave pilots who fought in the skies over England in the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 and the great air offensive over occupied Europe from 1942 onwards. The first five and a half chapters cover the Battle of Britain period when the RAF squadrons fought dogfights with the Luftwaffe and then fought them in gathering strengths using the ‘Big Wings’ to meet the bomber fleets attacking London. The second part of the book covers the Eagle Squadron period which was expanded with America’s entry into the war. The action moves to the USAAF ‘Big Wings’ of Thunderbolts and Mustang fighters that flew escort missions and duelled with the Luftwaffe over the continent in France, the Low Countries and the Reich itself. There is a host of


incredible firsthand accounts by British, Polish, Czech, German and American fighter pilots and photos never previously seen. 282pp.


£19.99 NOW £8


Then came that fateful day in September, and with Chamberlain’s declaration of war he suddenly realised that he was to become the Air Ace he had dreamed of being - but how long would he last against the Luftwaffe? During the “phoney war” he completed his training as a bomber pilot in an Armstrong Whitley V, and would go on to fly 62 raids in Whitley Vs and Wellingtons over Germany and North Africa. The chances of surviving this long back then were remote, to say the least, and it goes without saying that he lost countless colleagues during those years. In this extraordinarily graphic account of his experiences he invites us into the cockpit, lit up by bursting flak, shot at by German fighters, diving below the searchlights and wrestling his damaged aircraft home. Acclaimed WWII aviation historian Steve Darlow provides the background of the bomber war, which puts Pinkham’s experiences in the general war context. Gripping, nerve-wracking and unputdownable. 162pp, photos. £17.99 NOW £6.50


71389 FROM DACHAU TO D-DAY: The Refugee Who


Fought for Britain by Helen Fry


Written by an honorary research fellow in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College, London, this disturbing yet ultimately uplifting book details the horrendous experiences of a German Jew in the


concentration camp of Dachau. Arrested by the Gestapo after the terrible destruction wreaked on the Jews and their property during Kristallnacht and sent to the death camp, Willy Hirschfeld managed to survive to come to England as a refugee. He was shipped to Australia and interned as an enemy alien but nevertheless returned to Britain as one of the 10,000 volunteers for the British armed forces, and eventually found himself on active service as a tank driver in the Royal Armoured Corps. Three days after D-Day, Willy landed in France and saw front-line fighting through Normandy, Belgium and the Netherlands. He was the only survivor when his tank received a direct hit but, after recovery, he was given another tank and crossed the border into Germany with the Allied army. Having been involved in the liberation of Hamburg, Willy proudly drove his tank past Winston Churchill in the Victory Parade in Berlin in July 1945. Now, he is known as Willy Field and is a fervent supporter of Arsenal. What an inspirational story! 188 pages with b/w archive photos. £20 NOW £6


69402 48 HOURS OF KRISTALLNACHT by Mitchell G Bard PhD


Subtitled Night of Destruction/ Dawn of the Holocaust/ An Oral History. On the night of November 9th 1938, rampaging mobs throughout Germany and the newly acquired territories of Austria and the Südetenland freely attacked Jews. Over the next 48 hours, at least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, as many as 2,000 synagogues were burned, almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This pogrom has been named Kristallnacht or Night of the Broken Glass. Chronicles these pivotal 48 hours. 240 pages. £12.99 NOW £2.50


69860 STRANGERLAND: A Family at War by Helena Drysdale


In 1834, Isabella Campbell left England for India and within two weeks of joining her brother, had married his best friend, a dashing cavalry officer named Charles Gascoyne. 20 years and nine children later, Charles decreed the family should leave India for a nascent British colony on the other side of the world - New Zealand. He went ahead with the children and their governess. Isabella, who was unwell, returned to England. On landing in New Zealand a year later, she found herself ousted by the governess, rejected by her children and her once-beloved husband. While battle clouds amassed over the Gascoyne family, so New Zealand disintegrated into war between British settlers and the Maori. When the Gascoynes were joined by their nephew Bamber, more terror lay in store. 396pp in paperback, colour illus. £8.99 NOW £3


70119 THE BANTAMS by Sidney Allinson There were over 20 Bantam battalions plus two from Canada. Canadian military historian Sidney Allinson’s researches took him to Britain, Canada, the USA and the old battlefields of Flanders. He contacted over 300 survivors and gathered the many first-hand accounts of battle revealed in this stirring book. English and Scottish Bantams fought along the Somme, while Welsh bantams, despite hideous casualties, helped win the


Battle of Bourlon. Meanwhile, soldiers from Toronto and Vancouver served with distinction at Vimy Ridge. 312 pages illus.


£19.99 NOW £7


70391 SKORZENY’S SPECIAL MISSIONS by Otto Skorzeny


Otto Skorzeny was Germany’s top commando in World War Two and he remains one of the most famous men in the history of Special Forces. When Mussolini was imprisoned in Italy in 1943, it was Skorzeny who successfully planned the daring glider rescue, winning the Knight’s Cross and a promotion as a result. His talents were brought into play again when he was sent to Budapest in 1944 to stop the Hungarian Regent Admiral Horthy from signing a peace treaty with Stalin. Then dubbed ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’ by the Allies, he was award the German Cross in Gold. A few months later, he took a critical role in the Ardennes offensive with a controversial plan to raise a brigade disguised as Americans and using captured Sherman tanks. 221 page facsimile reprint of the 1957 original with 12 illus.


$16.99 NOW £6


70854 FIGHTING WITH THE SCREAMING EAGLES: With the 101st Airborne from


Normandy to Bastogne by Robert Bowen In the engaging inside story of the 401st Glider Infantry in World War Two the author uses his own experiences of the cold days and nights of Winter 1944 to pay tribute to all his comrades, those who survived and those who did not. His memoir covers fighting in Normandy, Holland and the Ardennes and includes vivid first-hand accounts of life as a prisoner of war. Bowen was drafted into the 101st Airborne Division as the war broke out and, soon afterwards, found himself storming ashore amid the chaos on Utah Beach through unfamiliar terrain littered with minefields and hidden snipers. He was wounded during the Normandy campaign but went on to fight in Holland and the Ardennes where he was captured and his ‘trip through hell’ truly began. His account is one of the very few by a member of a glider regiment from the horror of D-Day to the taste of C Rations and the despair of captivity. 256 paperback pages, photos, maps. £12.99 NOW £5


69071 I AM SOLDIER: War Stories from the Ancient


World to the 20th Century edited by Professor Robert O’Neill


70 soldiers whose lives span 2,500 years. Each tale covers the soldiers’ earlier lives and training, and how the experience of battle affected them. Here are Aristodemos, who survived Thermopylae, and Konstantin Mihailovic, a Serbian


who fought as a janissary for the Ottomans against Vlad Dracula of Wallachia. Here, too, are John Young, an infantry squad leader with the 9th Division during the Vietnam War, whose experiences in the Mekong Delta left him with PTSD, and Deneys Reitz, who was shocked by the indignity of death in the Boer War. 224 softback pages with many colour and b/w photos. £14.99 NOW £3


70866 WAR STORIES OF THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE by Michael Green and James D. Brown


The Battle of the Bulge in 1944 was Hitler’s last desperate and devastating push. Hitler thought that if he won, the Allies would agree on an armistice so that European forces could combine to resist the might of Stalinised Russia, and it was well known that this


outcome was favoured by General Patton. Bastogne never fell to Germany and finally Patton’s forces linked up with those of Montgomery, but the price paid in American lives was massive and Churchill paid tribute to the Bulge as “the greatest American battle of the war”. Military policeman Jerry C. Hrbek recalls the desperate scenes during an attack when he managed to get all the wounded, including Germans POWs, to military hospital. Engineer John Brush of the 30th Infantry Division recounts a narrow shave while mine-detecting in the Ardennes. Several articles by medic George Nicklin of K Company describe the personal cost of losing friends and comrades. Gripping and moving. 314pp, photos. £20 NOW £6.50


70892 THE FRANK FAMILY THAT SURVIVED by Gordon F. Sander


Recounted by the grandson of the head of the family, this is the inspiring and heart-breaking odyssey of another German-Jewish family. They, unlike Anne Frank, whose diary was posthumously published, and the 102,000 Dutch Jews who were betrayed or discovered, miraculously outlived the Nazi purge. This moving book documents their thousand-day long ordeal, including a raid when they were nearly found, and the joy and pain of liberation when they realized how few of their friends and family had survived. 298 pages, photos. Paperback. ONLY £4


68047 HOLOCAUST by Charles Reznikoff Reznikoff’s subject is one people’s suffering at the hands of another. His source materials are the US government’s records of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. None of the words are his own - instead he has created, through selection and arrangement of courtroom testimony, a poem that involves in the voices of the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets the terrible history lay itself bare history’s own tongue. Newly reset edition. 96pp in paperback. $15.95 NOW £2


69042 IN THE VALLEY OF MIST: Kashmir’s


Long War - A Family Story by Justine Hardy Straddling the volatile Himalayan border between India and Pakistan, Kashmir used to be an idyllic retreat from the searing heat of the plains. Then, overnight, this dreaming valley of mountains, water and light became a theatre of war, of political and religious upheaval, of jihad. Here is the reality of trying to stay sane, keep children safe, arrange weddings and seek solace in religion while being attacked by those acting in its name at the heart of the conflict within and beyond the Muslim world. 271pp, maps. £12.99 NOW £3.50


e-mail: orders@bibliophilebooks.com 68813 EDWIN’S LETTERS: A Fragment of Life


1940-43 edited by David A. Thomas Killed at the age of just 21 with six other airmen, Edwin Thomas formed the crew of a Halifax bomber. His early ambition was to be a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, but he never attained it. His rank was Sergeant Wireless Operator/Air Gunner. But in the end neither rank nor brevet mattered - death for Edwin and his friends was the common denominator. Edwin’s letters are full of life and humour, relating quite simply the trivia of a young man’s thoughts and feelings during wartime service. Cigarettes are more important than culture - sweets, rations, clothing coupons, pay-day and postal order allowances loom large as do cinema and popular music, dances and programmes on the wireless. 144pp, illus. £14.99 NOW £2.50


68558 FROM CHURCHILL’S


WAR ROOMS by Joanna Moody


Subtitled ‘Letters of a Secretary 1943-45’ this period saw some of the most important events of WWII. A young wartime secretary, Olive Christopher, spent this remarkable period working in Churchill’s famous Cabinet War Rooms, where she was one of a small inner circle, party to the political secrets of those crucial final years. Working for long hours


in an underground bunker opposite St. James’s Park, Olive wrote a series of letters to her fiancé, a Major in the armed forces and posted abroad. Filled with incredible details about the glamorous lifestyle and travel Olive enjoyed. Photos, 240pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £2.50


69082 PERILOUS ROAD TO ROME AND


BEYOND: The Memoirs of a Gordon Highlander by Edward Grace MC


Expanded from its original publication, it now covers the progress of the 6th Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders in World War II during the campaigns of the 1st Army in Tunisia and Italy and right up to the end of hostilities. As a young platoon commander the author and his men were in the forefront of the action. Matters came to a head during the desperate fighting on the Anzio beach- head. Severely wounded, the commander was evacuated and, once sufficiently recovered, he wrote notes of all that had happened in exact detail. He also describes in a moving and humble way his own post- conflict experiences and convalescence and pays tribute to those men who fought on without him. With a foreword by Lieutenant-General Sir Peter Graham KCB CBE. 199 pages illus and with maps. £19.99 NOW £5.50


69138 BLITZ SPIRIT: Bravery, Patriotism, Humour by Jaqueline Mitchell


As the German bombs began to rain down on London and many other British cities in September 1940, homes were flattened and people emerged from cramped shelters after sleepless nights into barely recognisable surroundings. This witty, uplifting and unputdownable volume comprises 40 extracts from sources as varied as Churchill himself, government information leaflets, ARP and Home Guard personnel, Noel Coward, A.P. Herbert, military top brass and most importantly and numerous, members of the civilian population. Colour and b/w photos, 208pp.


£9.99 NOW £3.50 69148 LIFE’S TOO SHORT TO CRY: The


Compelling Story of a Battle of Britain Ace by Tim Vigors DFC


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1940 found Tim Vigors flying Spitfires over Dunkirk in support of the evacuations and the following year in the Battle of Britain, during which he became an ace. As Hitler shelved his immediate invasion plans, Vigors was transferred to the Far East theatre. Now a Flight Commander, on 10 December 1941 he led his squadron of Brewster Buffalos to defend the men of the stricken Prince of Wales and Repulse off Malaya, who were coming under intense Japanese fire. He soon found out how misplaced his arrogance was as the enemy promptly blew his fuel tank out from under him. Miraculously surviving he was rescued and transported to hospital by two Malay civilians, which is where his diary ended. 320pp with b/w photos. £12.99 NOW £4


69190 ABOVE ALL, COURAGE


by Max Arthur


Subtitled ‘Personal Stories from the Falklands War’, here are firsthand accounts from action in the Malvinas in 1982. Major Michael J. Norman of the Royal Marines looks at the invasion of the Falklands, 2nd April. Four serving officers from the Royal Navy look at the bomb attack on HMS Ardent, 21st May. Sea, air


and ground support, the sinking of Sir Galahad 8th June, the Battle for Darwin and Goose Green 28th-29th May, the attack on Wireless Ridge 13th-14th June, attack on Mount Longdon 11th-12th June, attack on Mount Harriet 11th-12th June, assault on Two Sisters, 11th-12th June, assault on Tumbledown Mountain 13th-14th June and finally Rear-Admiral John F. Woodward of the Royal Navy looks at Command at Sea. 463pp paperback, photos.


£8.99 NOW £2


68892 WE WILL REMEMBER THEM


by Max Arthur


In 2005 for his book The Last Post, the final words from our soldiers of the Great War, Max Arthur interviewed the last 21 veterans of the Great War. How did the shell- shocked, the blind and the amputees manage to find a place in a society that war had changed beyond all recognition? And what of those


who had stayed at home - the conscientious objectors, the army of young widows, the spinsters without hope of a husband, the mothers who had sacrificed their sons? For each short entry there is a description of who is speaking and his or her role, like Dorothy Wright, nurse with Red Cross Voluntary Aid Attachment at St. Dunston’s Home for the Blind, or Captain Bertram Stewart from the Tank Corps. Photos, including upsetting ones of amputees. 276pp. £20 NOW £5


WORDS


Oh, Bertie, if I ever called you a brainless poop who ought to be given a scholarship at some lunatic asylum, I take back the words.


- P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit


70730 CHAMBERS GIGGLOSSARY: A


Lexicon of Laughter edited by Vicky Aldus and Morven Dooner


The lexicographer was defined by Samuel Johnson as ‘A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge.’ The practice was started by none other than the formidable Dr Johnson himself in his Dictionary of


1755. Ever since its first edition in 1901, the Chambers Dictionary has upheld this tradition by including a smattering of witty entries, the most celebrated of which is most probably éclair: ‘a cake, long in shape but short in duration, with cream filling and usually chocolate icing.’ Within these pages you will find a whole alphabetful of amusing definitions, notable and quotable definitions by famous wits, and a wealth of new funnies by the contributors to the Gigglossary. 138pp, illus. £9.99 NOW £4


69702 DIRTY WORDS: A


Literary Encyclopedia of Sex edited by Ellen Sussman The Mile High Club, Phone Sex, Tantric Sex, Gadara, Foreplay, Hermaphrodites, Exhibitionism, Coitus Interruptus, Climax, Celibacy, Bisexuality and Don Juan are some of the topic headings which are printable in our family magazine, among the hundred or so here. Each begins with a definition, followed by a story, fictional or otherwise, a discussion, a first-hand


experience, an historical perspective or a good old cogitation upon that topic. A-Z format. 290pp. $19.99 NOW £2


69868 TO BE OR NOT TO BE... by Liz Evers Ah, Shakespeare! The Bard of Avon. How much do we really know about him? With 38 plays and over 150 sonnets and other poems, it is no wonder we sometimes forget things we really should know. In our little treasure trove you will find the often surprising phrases that are part of our everyday speech like ‘It’s all Greek to me’, ‘To the manor born’, ‘Gild the Lily’, ‘Lead on, Macduff’, ‘It’s all Greek to me’ and many other quotes and misquotes. Here are all the plays’ essential plot lines and an index of famous lines and characters. 192 prettily decorated pages with dedication page. £9.99 NOW £3.75


70544 IMMORTAL WORDS: History’s Most Memorable Quotations and the Stories Behind Them


selected by Terry Breverton One of the many things that impresses us about this volume is that not only are the quotations arranged chronologically so that the reader can follow the progress of thought through the ages, but also there is an alphabetical index of authors to help you settle any


arguments about who said what. Each entry is accompanied by contextual info giving the circumstances in which it was said or written, a brief biography of the author and, in most cases, a picture of him or her. The book is leavened by humorous quips to balance statements about the darker side of humankind’s nature, and the selection is both thought-provoking and inspirational. It is also uplifting to realise that so many of the phrases that still inspire us today. 383 pages with 370 quotations, illus. £9.99 NOW £6


52782 DICTIONARY OF PUB NAMES A fascinating compilation containing nearly 5000 absorbing entries and can be dipped into for fun or consulted on a serious level for intriguing and amusing information not readily available elsewhere. The local pub is an institution unique to the British Isles, but since English literature abounds with references to hostelries


www.bibliophilebooks.com 69267 LETTERS FROM


NORMANDY by John Mercer


The author was called up in 1944 and, after nine months of square- bashing, vehicle training, Morse code and line laying, he became a gunner and was sent to Normandy. The next year saw him skirmishing in Belgium and suffering in waterlogged Holland. He would spend hundreds of hours glued to


the radio, waiting for a signal to fire. During the assault on Le Havre, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. After transferring to the 7th Division, he was one of the first British troops to enter Berlin and the Reich Chancellery. His letters to his widowed mother tell his gripping story. 121 pages with b/w archive photos. £20 NOW £4


69310 LOOKING BACK AT BRITAIN: War


and Peace 1940s by Jeremy Harwood Spectacular wartime photos make this a very special volume. St Paul’s cathedral rising above bomb-damaged buildings in clouds of dust and smoke. Ration books and war posters are pictured, and the text explains what we so often now forget, that Lord Halifax was the popular favourite to lead the wartime coalition government. The blitz produced some iconic pictures such as the bombed Coventry Cathedral, sleepers in the Underground, and a postman on his round in a bombed-out street in the City. D-Day and V.E. day are celebrated, there is a royal wedding, Prince Charles is born, and the decade ends with freezing and flooding as the welfare state is introduced. 150pp, archive photos. £17.99 NOW £6


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