UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · HISTORY · CAMPAIGNS
Robin Neillands
Also known as: Rob Neillands, Robin H. Neillands
Robin Hunter Neillands was a British writer who specialized in travel and military history. He also wrote under several pen names: Robin Hunter, Rob Hunter, Neil Lands and Debbie Hunter. Neillands served in 45 Commando, Royal Marines in Cyprus and the Middle East. Afterwards, as a salesman for Pan Books, he travelled widely. In Britain, he founded Spur Books and through them published his early travel guides to France. One of his many journeys, cycling the Way of St. James pilgrim trail to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, led to another book and also to the Confraternity of Saint James, the London-based pilgrim association. Other journeys, on foot, also generated popular travel books and newspaper articles.
CHURCHILL'S PROVENANCE WAS aristocratic, indeed ducal, and some have seen this as the most important key to his whole career.
— from Churchill
Most acclaimed
Winston Churchill
Produced in association with Correlli Barnett and Churchill College, Cambridge this book provides a fresh view of Churchill's changing attitudes and policies towards the evolving challenges of the twentieth century. It aims neither to denigrate nor engage in uncritical adulation. Studies in Statesmanship contains a series of careful assessments of different facets of Churchill's career made by a group of impartial historians mainly drawn from outside Britain. It is framed by a personal memoir from Churchill's daughter, Lady Soames and a concluding essay by Martin Gilbert, Churchill's biographer. With authors from the USA, Italy, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France and Poland, Studies in Statesmanship deals with Churchill as an energetic statesman in the arena of international politics and his concern to keep Britain independent and influential. A wide range of his interests and concerns are also examined. This book confirms Churchill's assured position as one of the most interesting political figures of the twentieth century.
The Dieppe Raid
2005
The Dieppe Raid is one of World War II’s most controversial hours. In 1942, a full two years before D-Day, thousands of men, mostly Canadian troops eager for their first taste of battle, were sent across the English Channel in a raid on the French port town of Dieppe. Air supremacy was not secured; the topography—a town hemmed in by tall cliffs and reached by steep beaches—meant any invasion was improbably difficult. The result was carnage: the beaches were turned into killing grounds even as the men came ashore, and whole battalions were cut to pieces. In this book, Robin Neillands has traced numerous surviving veterans of the Raid, in the United Kingdom and Canada, to tell the harrowing story of what actually took place, hour by hour, as disaster unfolded. He has also exhaustively explored all the archival evidence to establish as far as possible the paper trail of command, of who knew—or should have known—what was happening, and whether the whole debacle could have been prevented. The result is the definitive account of one of the Allies’ darkest hours.
The wars of the Roses
Lancaster and York. For much of the fifteenth century, these two families were locked in battle for control of the British monarchy. Kings were murdered and deposed. Armies marched on London. Old noble names were ruined while rising dynasties seized power and lands. The war between the royal House of Lancaster and York, the longest and most complex in British history, profoundly altered the course of the monarchy. In The Wars of the Roses, Alison Weir reconstructs this conflict with the same dramatic flair and impeccable research that she brought to her highly praised The Princes in the Tower. The first battle erupted in 1455, but the roots of the conflict reached back to the dawn of the fifteenth century, when the corrupt, hedonistic Richard II was sadistically murdered, and Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king, seized England's throne. Both Henry IV and his son, the cold warrior Henry V, ruled England ably, if not always wisely--but Henry VI proved a disaster, both for his dynasty and his kingdom. Only nine months old when his father's sudden death made him king, Henry VI became a tormented and pathetic figure, weak, sexually inept, and prey to fits of insanity. The factional fighting that plagued his reign escalated into bloody war when Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, laid claim to the throne that was rightfully his--and backed up his claim with armed might. Alison Weir brings brilliantly to life both the war itself and the historic figures who fought it on the great stage of England. Here are the queens who changed history through their actions--the chic, unconventional Katherine of Valois, Henry V's queen; the ruthless, social-climbing Elizabeth Wydville; and, most crucially, Margaret of Anjou, a far tougher and more powerful character than her husband,, Henry VI, and a central figure in the Wars of the Roses. Here, too, are the nobles who carried the conflict down through the generations--the Beauforts, the bastard descendants of John of Gaunt, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known to his contemporaries as "the Kingmaker"; and the Yorkist King, Edward IV, a ruthless charmer who pledged his life to cause the downfall of the House of Lancaster. The Wars of the Roses is history at its very best--swift and compelling, rich in character, pageantry, and drama, and vivid in its re-creation of an astonishing, dangerous, and often grim period of history. Alison Weir, one of the foremost authorities on the British royal family, demonstrates here that she is also one of the most dazzling stylists writing history today.