• History

      The Art of War in plain English, By Sun Tzu, Editor A. N. Pearce. 

      by
      ehwhat?
       Number of Views: 510 
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      3. History,
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      Brief books normally get brief reviews. This particular version of the Chinese classic on warfare is less than 10.000 words long. And, as the title states, it is written in plain English. If you are looking for the original poetics, you have purchased the wrong volume. If you are looking for the original footnotes from the authoritative Giles 1910 version, you have the wrong volume. If you are looking for the Chinese version with cases studies and examples added over several centuries, you have the wrong volume. If you are looking for a more recent version with contemporary case studies and useful commentaries (Griffith et al 1963, 1971 and 2005, Sawyer 1994, Kaufman 1996, Michelson 2003, Cantrell 2004, McCreadie 2008, Cleary 2009, Butler-Bowden 2010, Michelson and Michelson 2010, Vook 2011 [etc. ad infinitum]), you have the wrong volume.
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      Great MilitaryCommanders: Marlborough, Wellington and Slim by Saul David 

      by
      BuggerAll
       Number of Views: 566 
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      2. Non-Fiction,
      3. History,
      4. Military
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      This short book is published by Amazon as a kindle e-book for £3.99 In fact it's not so much a book as a collection of three essays about Marlborough, Wellington and Slim bound together by an introduction and a conclusion which compares their respective military merits and suggests which one the author thinks was the greatest.

      These are quite short essays but David packs a lot of detail in. He is especially good on the formative parts of their careers. I did not know much about Marlborough but I've read quite a bit about the Peninsular War and Waterloo but almost nothing previously about Wellington in Ireland and India and I've read Slim's Defeat into Victory and a number of other books about the Burma War but didn't know he was in Gallipoli or on the North West Frontier.
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      ‘No Escape Zone’ by Nick Richardson 

      by
      seaweed
       Number of Views: 921 
      1. Categories:
      2. Non-Fiction,
      3. History,
      4. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
      5. Military
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      In 1994 Nick Richardson was a Sea Harrier pilot in 801 Squadron aboard HMS Ark Royal in the Aegean. Responding to a request for support from the ground, he was shot down over Bosnia on 16th April. This is the gripping story of the events leading up to that, and of his subsequent escape from a country hostile on every side, told by a man with his neck on the line both in the air and on the ground. It is a brilliant example of the can-do spirit of the Fleet Air Arm. It is also a salutary reminder of the usefulness of fixed-wing maritime air power.

      Richardson rightly points out that in 1994 the Sea Harrier was the only British fast jet capable of air defence, ground attack and reconnaissance, and that unlike RAF fast jet pilots those of the Fleet Air Arm were trained in all three roles so could be called upon for any task, indeed could swing roles in flight is appropriately armed. The FAA has its full share of the Royal Navy’s long tradition of willingness to go anywhere and do anything, and it’s people’s readiness to hop in and make one at the drop of a hat.
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      Doctor Watson's War. A Short Story by Patrick Mercer 

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      BuggerAll
       Number of Views: 824 
      1. Categories:
      2. History,
      3. Military,
      4. War
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      I'm glad that Colonel Mercer has taken time out from his duties of representing the good people of Newark to write this short story. It's the story of Sherlock Holmes' side kick Watson in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. It's published by Amazon as a Kindle-ebook for £1.99 which seems fair enough.
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      'Britannia to Beira and Beyond' by Mike Critchley 

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      seaweed
       Number of Views: 870 
      1. Categories:
      2. Non-Fiction,
      3. History,
      4. Humour,
      5. Memoire/Battlefield Memoire,
      6. Military
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      “Splendaciously mendacious rolled the Brassbound man ashore”
      (Kipling)

      As a youngster Mike Critchley, both of whose grandfathers had served in the Royal Navy, only ever wanted to go to sea. He entered Dartmouth in January 1963 and served, as a seaman officer, to 1974. He is familiar to many as a writer and broadcaster and is the founder of his successful publishing firm, Maritime Books.

      He has finally been persuaded to share some reminiscences of his naval career. The volume under review (150pp, A5 paperback) covers the first five years of his naval career in a variety of ships from Ark Royal (the old real one) down to a converted LCT, a coastal minesweeper and (briefly) an inshore.
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      'Mountbatten - Apprentice War Lord' by Adrian Smith (IB Tauris). 

      by
      seaweed
       Number of Views: 1082 
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      Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
      Like a Colossus; and we petty men
      Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
      To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
      Men at some time are masters of their fates:
      The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
      But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
      (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1.2.135)

      Dr Smith is an academic historian from the University of Southampton. He has mined the Broadlands archives to compile a memoir of Lord Mountbatten’s professional life.

      This is set in a context derived from many other sources including published biographies of Lord M and the memoirs of many contemporaries, superiors (especially Cunningham) and one-time subordinates. This is the first of maybe two or three volumes and takes the Life up to a focus on the Dieppe raid and then the planning for Overlord. In order to deal at length with Lord Mountbatten as a naval officer, his early life and gossip about his wife and marriage are only sketched in, although the author recognises that there has to be some background for anybody’s life to make sense. He rightly eschews the prurient does not, for instance, mention Edwina being carted off to hospital conjoined to ‘Hutch’.
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      'British Warships and Auxiliaries 1952' by Steve Bush 

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      seaweed
       Number of Views: 1058 
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      2. Non-Fiction,
      3. History,
      4. Military
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      Far-called our navies melt away—
      On dune and headland sinks the fire—
      Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
      Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

      Kipling, ‘Recessional’

      To mark Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, Maritime Press has produced a ‘1952’ edition of their regular product, British Warships and Auxiliaries. Although publication of this annual only started in 1979, this new volume has been written as if it had been compiled in 1952 and the author has successfully avoided including material that has come to notice since. So for the reader, it is as if he had gone back sixty years and purchased a ‘new’ book about the Royal Navy.

      While I was not yet serving in 1952, many of the ships listed were familiar in the years that followed, from Vanguard (half a day as a schoolboy) down to Reward (two bizarre weeks as an extra hand to do the astro).

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      'British Warships and Auxiliaries 2012' by Steve Bush 

      by
      seaweed
       Number of Views: 904 
      1. Categories:
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      3. History,
      4. Military
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      The book is a compilation which has been produced on an annual basis by Maritime Books since 1979 and takes the form of a 112p A5 paperback. The 2012 edition is up to date to December 2011. It is complimentary to heavyweight works such as Jane’s in that it covers the Royal Navy only, but in greater depth.

      The author, who spent 22 years in the Royal Navy from 1978, opens with an entirely justified and scathing review of SDSR and its consequences for our maritime defences, and a review of the Libyan operation from a naval point of view, which ‘highlighted the sheer lunacy of the Government‘s assertion that it could mitigate the loss of LRMP through the use of other assets‘. The decommissioning of the type 22s is identified as ‘bringing to an end … the Royal Navy’s at-sea intelligence collecting capabilities’. Well done, Mr Bush. Not that the Government cares.

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