Here you will find some of the best reading for the Britain course divided into the five key topics. All books have links to either Amazon or eBay. Any book with an * means we have a copy that you can potentially borrow. Please ask the department for further recommendations.
Key Topic 1: Britain and the French Wars, 1793-1815
*Adkins, Roy (2004). Trafalgar: The Biography of a Battle. London: Abacus - This is the true story of the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain's most significant sea battle, as seen through the smoke-hazed gunports of the fighting ships.
Esdaile, Charles (2003). The Peninsular War. London: Penguin. - This book is more focused on the impact on Portugal and Spain as a result of the war rather than the battlefield tactics but a good read for understanding more about the impact of war.
Knight, Roger (2014). Britain Against Napoleon: The Organisation of Victory, 1793-1815. London: Penguin. - This book looks beyond the familiar exploits (and bravery) of the army and navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It shows the degree to which, because of the magnitude and intensity of hostilities, the capacities of the whole British population were involved: industrialists, farmers, shipbuilders, gunsmiths and gunpowder manufacturers.
Knight, Roger (2006). The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson. London: Penguin. - Knight places Nelson firmly in the context of the Royal Navy at the time. He analyses Nelson's more obvious qualities, his leadership strengths and his coolness and certainty in battle, and also explores his strategic grasp, the condition of his ships, the skill of his seamen and his relationships with the officers around him
Paget, Julian (2005). Wellington's Peninsular War: Battles and Battlefields. Barnsley: Leo Cooper LTD. - Arranged in sections, the author starts with a review of the whole war and the background to it and follows with a complete chronological account of the war year by year. Finally a chapter on each of the major battles includes maps and photographs of the battlefields
Snow, Peter (2010). To War with Wellington: From the Peninsula to Waterloo. London: John Murray. - Snow tracks the development of Wellington's leadership and his relationship with the extraordinary band of men he led from Portugal in 1808 to their final destruction of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo seven years later.
Sugden, Dr John (2012). Nelson: A Dream of Glory. London: Pimlico. - A comprehensive and thoroughly researched account written on Horatio Nelson's rise to international fame. Giving us the private as well as the public man, it combines ground-breaking scholarship with a brilliantly vivid and compelling style.
Key Topic 2: The Crimean War, 1854-56
Bostridge, Mark (2020). Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend. London: Penguin. - From her tireless campaigning and staggering intellectual abilities to her tortured relationship with her sister and her distressing medical condition, this vivid and immensely readable biography draws on a wealth of unpublished material and previously unseen family papers, disentangling the myth from the reality and reinvigorating with new life one of the most iconic figures in modern British history.
Grehan, John (2014). British Battles of the Crimean War, 1854-1856. Barnsley: Pen & Sword. - The Crimean War was one of the first wars to be documented extensively in written reports and photographs. News correspondence reaching Britain from the Crimea was the first time the public were kept informed of the day-to-day realities of war. This unique collection of original accounts will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians, students and all those interested in what was one of the most significant periods in British military history.
Figes, Orlando (2011). Crimea. London: Penguin. - Orlando Figes' vivid book reinterprets this extraordinary conflict. Bringing to life ordinary soldiers in snow-filled trenches and surgeons on the battlefield.
Gordon, Sophie (2017). Shadows of War: Roger Fenton's Photographs of the Crimea 1854. London: Royal Collection Trust. - In March 1855 Roger Fenton, a former solicitor and founding member of what is now known as the Royal Photographic Society, travelled to war-torn Crimea to capture the brutality of war through the medium of photography. This publication brings together all of these works and highlights the impact that such images had on those back in Britain, seeing in them the realities of war documented in pictures for the first time.
Robinson, Jane (2006). The Charismatic Black Nurse Who Became a Heroine of the Crimea. London: Robinson Publishing. - For more than a century after her death this remarkable woman was all but forgotten. This, the first full-length biography of a Victorian celebrity recently voted the greatest black Briton in history, brings Mary Seacole centre stage at last
Royle, Trevor (2000). Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856. London: Abacus. - Trevor Royle demonstrates how the Crimean War was a watershed in world history: coming between the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the opening shots of the First World War in 1914 it pointed the way to what mass warfare would be like for soldiers in the twentieth century.
Key Topic 3: The second Boer War, 1899-1902
Editors, Charles River (2018). The Boer War: The History and Legacy of the Conflict that Solidified British Rule in South Africa. Scotts Valley: Create Space Publishing. - Looks at the controversial fighting and the manner in which it affected the 20th century. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about the Boer War like never before.
Farwell, Byron (2009). The Great Boer War. Barnsley: Pen & Sword. - Byron Farwell traces the war's origins, the slow mounting of the British efforts to overthrow the Afrikaners, the bungling and bickering of the British command, the remarkable series of bloody battles that almost consistently ended in victory for the Boers over the much more numerous British forces, political developments in London and Pretoria, the sieges of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley, the concentration camps into which Boer families were herded and the exhausting guerrilla warfare of the last few years when the Boer armies were finally driven from the field.
Millard, Candice (2017). Hero of the Empire: The Making of Winston Churchill. London: Penguin. - This is the incredible story of how one incredible year in Churchill's life - an adventure involving war in South Africa, imprisonment, endurance and escape - would be the making of one of the most extraordinary men in history.
Pakenham, Thomas (1991). The Boer War. London: Abacus. - Thomas Pakenham's narrative is based on first-hand and largely unpublished sources ranging from the private papers of the leading protagonists to the recollections of survivors from both sides. Mammoth in scope and scholarship, as vivid, fast-moving and breathtakingly compelling as the finest fiction. The Boer War is the definitive account of this extraordinary conflict - a war precipitated by greed and marked by almost inconceivable blundering and brutalities
Key Topic 4: Trench warfare on the Western Front, 1914-1918
Bull, Stephen (2014). Trench: A History of Trench Warfare on the Western Front. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. - Dr Stephen Bull reveals the experience of life in the trenches, from length of service and coping with death and disease, to the uniforms and equipment given to soldiers on both sides of the conflict. He reveals how the trenches were constructed, the weaponry which was developed specifically for this new form of warfare, the tactics employed in mass attacks and the increasingly adept defensive methods designed to hold ground at all cost.
Charman, Terry (2015). First World War on the Home Front. London: Andre Deutsch Limited - From the effects of DORA (Defence of the Realm Act) to the threat of Zeppelin raids, to government propaganda and the power of the press, The First World War on the Home Front recalls how the people of Britain not only faced up to the threats to their country but also prepared for the fact that life in Britain would never be the same.
Gregory, A. (2008). The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - Adrian Gregory sheds new light on the public reaction to the war, examining the role of propaganda and rumour in fostering patriotism and hatred of the enemy
Hart, Peter (2009). 1918: A Very British Victory. London: W & N. - Peter Hart gives a vivid account of this last year of conflict - what it was like to fight on the front line, through the words of the men who were there. In a chronicle of unparalleled scope and depth, he brings to life the suspense, turmoil and tragedy of 1918's vast offensives.
Middlebrook, Martin (2006). The First Day of The Somme: 1 July 1916. London: Penguin. - As well as drawing on official sources, local newspapers, autobiographies, novels and poems from the time, most importantly The First Day on the Somme also takes in the accounts of hundreds of survivors: normal men, many of them volunteers, who found themselves thrown into a scene of unparalleled tragedy and horror.
Steel, Nigel and Hart, Peter (2001). Passchendaele. London: W&N. - A compelling account of the battle for Passchendaele from grand strategy at the highest levels right down to the experience of the ordinary infantrymen.
Winter, Jay (2016). The Cambridge History of the First World War, Volume 3, Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - Sheds new light on culturally significant issues such as how families and medical authorities adapted to the challenges of war and the shift that occurred in gender roles and behaviour that would subsequently reshape society.
Key Topic 5: The war in the air, 1914-1918
Buckley, John and Beaver, Paul (2018). The Royal Air Force: The First One Hundred Years. Oxford: OUP. - In 1918, the Royal Air Force became the first major independent air force in the world. Formed to serve a strategic need in the most intensive war that Britain had then fought, the RAF continued in the inter-war era to play a key role in the political and diplomatic world, and in defending the Empire.
Castle, Ian (2015). The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War. Oxford: Osprey. - This comprehensive volume tells the story of the first aerial campaign in history, as the famed Zeppelins, and then the Gotha and the massive Staaken 'Giant' bombers waged war against the civilian population of London in the first ever 'Blitz'.
Jones, H.A (2009). The War in the Air: The Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force. Volume 2. Uckfield: Naval & Military Press. - A comprehensive history of the role of the RAF during the First World War. There are two volumes.
Overy, Richard (2019). The Birth of the R.A.F, 1918: The World's First Air Force. London: Penguin. - The birth of the Royal Air Force during World War I marked a pivotal moment in modern military and political history.