Kitcheners Last Volunteer

Download or read book Kitchener's Last Volunteer written by Dennis Goodwin and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-01-31 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry Allingham is the last British serviceman alive to have volunteered for active duty in the First World War and is one of very few people who can directly recall the horror of that conflict. In Kitchener's Last Volunteer, he vividly recaptures how life was lived in the Edwardian era and how it was altered irrevocably by the slaughter of millions of men in the Great War, and by the subsequent coming of the modern age. Henry is unique in that he saw action on land, sea and in the air with the British Naval Air Service. He was present at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 with the British Grand Fleet and went on to serve on the Western Front. He befriended several of the young pilots who would lose their lives, and he himself suffered the privations of the front line under fire. In recent years, Henry was given the opportunity to tell his remarkable story to a wider audience through a BBC documentary, and he has since become a hero to many, meeting royalty and having many honours bestowed upon him. This is the touching story of an ordinary man's extraordinary life - one who has outlived six monarchs and twenty-one prime ministers, and who represents a last link to a vital point in our nation's history.

Download or read book Shot at Dawn written by Julian Putkowski and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1990-12-31 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking work of military history reveals the unsettling truth about British Army executions during WWI. The issue of military executions during the war has always been controversial, and embargoes have long kept historians from researching it. Julian Putkowski has spent decades uncovering the stories of mutinies and soldiers accused of desertion, and of the executions that followed. In Shot at Dawn, Putkowski and co-author Julian Sykes shed light on a practice that for too long has been shrouded in secrecy. They show that trials were grossly unfair and incompetent. Many of the condemned men had been soldiers of exemplary behavior, courage, and leadership who cracked under the dreadful strain of trench warfare. This acclaimed book is the authority on this shameful legacy.

Download or read book Maud Coleno’s Daughter written by John Dann and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One woman’s transformation from ingénue chorus girl to wealthy Mayfair hostess – whilst hiding some dark secrets... Dorothy Hartman, known to her intimates as ‘Dodo’, a glamorous society hostess and a successful businesswoman, had a hidden past. Her ‘missing’ earlier life had been shrouded in mystery; a deceit she deliberately cultivated. The love child of a Cockney music hall artiste, born in poverty during the Victorian Fin de Siècle, Dodo emerged as an attractive West End chorus girl, compelled to marry an army officer twice her age during the First World War. Her aristocratic second husband disinherited her on his death-bed, following a string of affairs. Dodo’s next marriage secured a partnership in Lendrum & Hartman, the most prestigious transatlantic car dealership in London, patronised by royalty – including the Princes of Wales and Wallis Simpson. Using her theatrical charm Dodo seamlessly moved amongst fashionable society becoming a regular passenger to America during the golden age of sea travel, a renowned Mayfair hostess whose guests were drawn from the theatrical world such as Charlie Chaplin, Frances Day and Valerie Hobson, including business and political circles like Jack Profumo. She rode with the Beaufort hunt, which included Britain’s top wartime spymaster. Maud Coleno’s Daughter contains largely unpublished material about a once well-known, now forgotten Mayfair hostess, who succeeded in a man’s world despite disadvantage of birth. It throws another perspective on little-known aspects of some influential British and American business people involved in the smoke and mirrors world of pre-war political espionage, set against country house balls and high society. The book will appeal to fans of biographies and ‘rags to riches’ stories.

Download or read book Great War Britain London: Remembering 1914-18 written by Stuart Hallifax and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2014-11-03 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First World War claimed over 995,000 British lives, and its legacy continues to be remembered today. Great War Britain: London offers an in-depth portrait of the capital and its people during the 'war to end all wars'. It describes the reaction to the war's outbreak; charts the experience of individuals who enlisted; shares many first-hand experiences, including tales of the Zeppelin raids and anti-German riots of the era; examines the work of local hospitals; and explores how the capital and its people coped with the transition to life in peacetime. Vividly illustrated with evocative images from the newspapers of the day, it commemorates the extraordinary bravery and sacrifice of London's residents between 1914 and 1918.

Download or read book Publishers, Readers and the Great War written by Vincent Trott and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature is at the heart of popular understandings of the First World War in Britain, and has perpetuated a popular memory of the conflict centred on disillusionment, horror and futility. This book examines how and why literature has had this impact, exploring the role played by authors, publishers and readers in constructing the memory of the war since 1918. It demonstrates that publishers were as influential as authors in shaping perceptions of the conflict, and it provides a detailed analysis of critical and popular responses to war books, tracing the evolution of readers' attitudes to the war between 1918 and 2014. By exploring the cultural legacy of the war from these two previously overlooked perspectives, Vincent Trott offers fresh insights regarding the emergence of a collective memory of the First World War in Britain. Drawing on a broad range of primary source material, including publishers' correspondence, dust jackets, adverts, book reviews and diary entries, and examining canonical authors such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Vera Brittain alongside long-forgotten texts and more recent autobiographical works by Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, Publishers, Readers and the Great War provides a rich and nuanced analysis of the climate within which First World War literature was written, published and received since 1918.

Download or read book HMS Hood written by Daniel Knowles and published by Fonthill Media. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over twenty years the battlecruiser HMS 'Hood' toured the world as the most iconic warship in the Royal Navy. Unmatched in her beauty and charisma, 'Hood' is one of history's greatest warships. During the twilight years of the British Empire the 'Hood 'toured the world showing the flag as a symbol of British power. As the Royal Navy's show-ship, 'Hood' came to command a special place in the hearts and minds of the British public. Such was the regard for HMS 'Hood' that her destruction in the Denmark Strait on the morning of 24 May 1941 by the German battleship 'Bismarck' created dismay across the world. Within minutes of entering battle 'the Mighty Hood' as she was affectionately known, was destroyed by a catastrophic explosion which had echoes of Jutland a quarter of a century earlier. Out of a crew of a crew of 1,418, only 3 survived. The sinking of HMS 'Hood' was the single largest disaster ever sustained by the Royal Navy. This book charts the life and death of this legendary battlecruiser in both peace and war from her early origins, through the interwar years, to her destruction.

Download or read book The Archaeology of the Royal Flying Corps written by Melanie Winterton and published by Pen and Sword Archaeology. This book was released on 2022-10-07 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Winterton’s book is a good introductory effort on the haptic environment of World War I aviators and their personal artifacts."—The Journal of the Air Force Historical Foundation Archaeology provides a fascinating insight into the lives of the aviators of the First World War. Their descriptions of the sensation of flying in the open cockpits of the primitive warplanes of the day, and the artifacts that have survived from these first years of aerial combat, give us a powerful sense of what their wartime service was like and chart the beginning of our modern understanding of aviation. But the subject hasn’t been explored in any depth before, which is why Melanie Winterton’s pioneering book is so timely. Hers is the first study of the trench art, souvenirs and lucky mascots associated with the Royal Flying Corps which, in an original way, tell us so much about the experience of flying on the Western Front a century ago. Extensive quotations from the memoirs of these early airmen are combined with an analysis of the artifacts themselves. They convey something of the fear and anxiety the airmen had to grapple with on a daily basis and bring out the full significance of the poignant souvenirs they left behind. Pieces of crashed aeroplane – wooden propellers, strips of linen, fragments of metal – were recycled and circulated during the war and afterwards became the focus of attention in the domestic home. As Melanie Winterton demonstrates, these items connected the living with the deceased, which is why they are so strongly evocative even today.