Why the British forces fought so badly in World War II and who was to blame. Gordon Corrigan's Mud, Blood and Poppycock overturned the myths that surround the First World War. Now he challenges our assumptions about the Second World War in this brilliant, caustic narrative that exposes just how close Britain came to losing. He reveals how Winston Churchill bears a heavy responsibility for the state of our forces in 1939, and how his interference in military operations caused a string of disasters. The reputations of some of our most famous generals are also overturned: above all, Montgomery, whose post-war stature owes more to his skill with a pen than talent for command. But this is not just a story of personalities. Gordon Corrigan investigates how the British, who had the biggest and best army in the world in 1918, managed to forget everything they had learned in just twenty years. The British invented the tank, but in 1940 it was the Germans who showed the world how to use them. After we avoided defeat, but the slimmest of margins, it was a very long haul to defeat Hitler's army, and one in which the Russians would ultimately bear the heaviest burden. This is a magnificent reassessment of Britain's War, from the policy decisions in the 1920s to the great battles and campaigns of 1939-45.

BLOOD, SWEAT AND ARROGANCE: The Myth's of Churchill's War

History

Gordon Corrigan

Military

Weidenfeld Military

<p>In this major new history, Gordon Corrigan argues that what we call the Second World War was in fact two separate conflicts: one against Germany (and, for a while, Italy) in Western Europe, Soviet Russia and North Africa; the other against Japan in the Far East and Pacific. Each conflict had distinct causes and had to be fought in different ways against very different enemies, who rarely, if ever, coordinated their efforts. This is a new and cogent account of an immense, exhausting six-year conflict that continues to fascinate. Corrigan examines the agendas of the warring nations and offers fresh and vivid interpretations; Britain's own part in the war comes in for particularly close scrutiny: militarily, the British suffered an agonising series of defeats before the tide turned. The country emerged economically broken, with the loss of her empire a virtual certainty. The Second World War is vast in its erudition and epic in its execution. It will change forever the way we think about the titanic conflicts that dominated the years 1939 to 1945.</p>

The Second World War: A Military History

Atlantic Books UK

A Great and Glorious Adventure

ATLANTIC BOOKS *

Atlantic

<p>Fought on Sunday, June 18th, 1815, by some 220,000 men over the rain-sodden ground in what is now Belgium, the Battle of Waterloo brought an end to twenty-three years of almost continual war between imperial France and her enemies.</p>

Waterloo: A New History of the Battle and its Armies

Europe

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Books by Gordon Corrigan