Books

In the early hours of Thursday, July 10, 1919 hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers rushed out onto the streets and rooftops and gaped up into the sky as a great silver ship, hundreds of feet long, rolled slowly across the city. Restaurants, hotels, theatres and bars emptied as people took to the street to gaze upwards. The ship seemed to hover over the New York Times building in 42nd street before turning its bow to the east and heading off towards the Atlantic. New Yorkers had never seen anything like it. They were left to wonder as the thrum of the engines died away. But it was no alien visitation. The huge silver craft, bearing a lion rampant across its bow, was the Scottish-built airship R34 manned by a 30-strong crew of World War I veterans (and a stowaway cat). A few days earlier the...

The summer of 2010 marks the 70th Anniversary of the greatest air battle the world has ever witnessed, played out over the skies of southern England the full might of the German Luftwaffe pitched itself against the defending forces of Britain’s RAF, with the sole intent of gaining air supremacy over England as a prelude to a full blown Nazi invasion of Great Britain. The Battle of Britain took place over the summer months of 1940 and was a brutal battle of attrition for both men and machines, it ended in the September with the RAF still standing and the Luftwaffe thwarted in their attempts to destroy it as an effect force, but at a heavy cost to both sides. Here is our selection of the Books and DVDs that pay tribute to that epic battle.