Featuring a collection of vintage photographs and archived images, this book explores the rich history of local areas in England. It highlights the evolution of streets, shops, pubs, and the lives of the people who inhabit these communities, providing a nostalgic glimpse into the past and showcasing the unique character of each location.
Since the early Middle Ages, the royal families of Europe have rewarded loyal service with a wide range of Orders of Knighthood and Chivalry. This book describes the range of European Orders conferred before 1945, some of which stretch back hundreds of years.
Surveys the medals awarded to British personnel for military services from the First World War to operations of British forces in the opening years of the twenty-first century. The campaign medals awarded for the military actions have become a popular field for collectors, since the majority of British awards were officially named.
At a time of imperial expansion, British forces were almost constantly in action against major powers, in wars of conquest, or in expeditions on the fringes of Empire, such as the North West Frontier, southern Africa or Burma. This book outlines the medals issued to British soldiers and sailors for military service.
A concise history of the attempts to develop and improve the British Army's most important individual weapon, and the ammunition designed for it.
Too often historical writing on the Russian War of 1854-56 focuses narrowly on the land campaign fought in the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. The wider war waged at sea by the British and French navies against the Russians is ignored. The allied navies aimed to strike at Russian interests anywhere in the world where naval force could be brought to bear, and as a result campaigns were waged in the Baltic, the Black Sea, the White Sea, on the Russian Pacific coast and in the Sea of Azoff. Yet it is the land campaign in the Crimea that shapes our understanding of events. In this graphic and original study, Peter Duckers seeks to set the record straight. He shows how these neglected naval campaigns were remarkably successful, in contrast to the wretched failures that beset the British army on land. Allied warships ranged across Russian waters sinking shipping, disrupting trade, raiding ports, bombarding fortresses, destroying vast quantities of stores and shelling coastal towns. The scale and intensity of the naval operations embarked upon during the war are astonishing, and little appreciated, and this new book offers the first overall survey of them.
For over two hundred years the British maintained a powerful military system in India. If it is recalled at all in the popular imagination of today, the Victorian Indian Army remembered as much for its use in the pomp and ceremony of grand imperial occasions as for anything else - as a colour adjunct to the parades, processions and rituals of British India. But although Britain is regarded as primarily a naval power in the heyday of Empire in the late Victorian era, possession of the Indian Army gave her a major land-power status east of Suez. This military might was vital to the protection of British interests in India itself and for the defence of its often turbulen frontiers. It was equally important as a tool of imperial expansion the Indian Army was deployed in China, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere to safeguard the flanks of the Indian Empire and it also contributed in a significant manner to the extension and maintenance of British rule in the tropics.
Fully revised second edition of Peter Duckers best-selling guide to military medals
This new Spink book offers an introductory guide to British and Imperial medals for gallantry which have appeared since 1854 and which continue to be awarded to this day, illustrating the type of action which has led to the award of the various medals over nearly 200 years.