1914: Voices from the Battlefields

Matthew Richardson • £18.99
pen-and-sword.co.uk

The opening battles on the Western Front marked a watershed in military history. A dramatic, almost Napoleonic war of movement quickly gave way to static, attritional warfare in which modern weaponry had forced the combatants to take to the earth. Some of the last cavalry charges took place in the same theatre in which armoured cars, motorcycles and aeroplanes were beginning to make their presence felt.

These dramatic developments were recorded in graphic detail by soldiers who were eyewitnesses to them. There is a freshness and immediacy to their accounts which Matthew Richardson exploits in this thoroughgoing reassessment of the 1914 campaign.

His vivid narrative emphasises the perspective of the private soldiers and the junior officers of the British Army, the men at the sharp end of the fighting. This title has full colour plates containing over 100 illustrations.

Remarkable Women of the Second World War: A Collection of Untold Stories

Victoria Panton Bacon • £18.99
thehistorypress.co.uk

They were told to hold the fort. They did far more than that. When the Second World War broke out, the task of keeping society afloat fell on the shoulders of the women left behind.

Women the world over stepped into boots they’d never worn before – becoming engineers, labourers and intelligence experts.

Their houses were razed to the ground, they fled their enemy-occupied countries and they picked up guns to defend their homes, but their stories are rarely told. Remarkable Women of the Second World War is a collection of 12 of these stories, all carefully gathered and retold by Victoria Panton Bacon.

These are the stories of Galina, Russian navigator who flew on the front line for the Red Army alongside the feared Night Witches; Ena, an ATA engineer who didn’t think much of the Spitfires and Hurricanes she worked on; and Lee, a Jewish girl who fled Frankfurt and arrived in Coventry on a Kindertransport train.

These women weren’t remarkable because of high rank or status, but because of their grit, resilience and determination.

The Potteries Through Time

Mervyn Edwards • £15.99
amberley-books.com

Renowned for their illustrious ceramic manufacturing heritage, the Staffordshire Potteries originally centred upon six towns: Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Fenton and Longton. The modern city of Stoke-on-Trent was created from these six towns and around fifty villages. In The Potteries Through Time, author Mervyn Edwards presents a nostalgic visual chronicle of the towns and villages in the Potteries across the decades.

This latest volume explores the hills and hollows between the centres whilst also offering new archive photographs of the main towns. We find shabby backstreets cowering in the shadow of enormous coal tips – the Potteries’ own ‘black hills’ – and there are industrial hotspots and busy suburbs. Then there are the proud old chapels and pubs and the even prouder people that patronised them.

This collection of archive photographs is an engaging book that charts changing times and the shifting identity of the Potteries. It will be of immense interest to local residents, visitors and all those with links to the area.