2025 Templer Medal and Chapple Prize Longlist
Sunday 25th January 2026
We are pleased to announce the following titles as long-listed for the 2025 Templer Medal and the Chapple (formerly Best First Book) Prize.
* denotes first book, eligible for the Chapple Prize.
Ben Barry, The Rise and Fall of the British Army, 1975-2025 (Osprey)
*Richard Batten, For King and Country: The Role of Patriotism in Mobilisation in the First World War (Pen & Sword)
Tim Bean, Edward Flint, James Kitchen and Paul Latawski (eds), Orchestrating Warfare: A History of the British Army’s Corps and Divisions at War since 1914 (Routledge)
Tim Bouverie, Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler (Bodley Head)
*Alexander Burns, Infantry in Battle, 1733-83 (Helion)
Raymond Callahan and Alan Jeffreys, Churchill’s Forgotten Generals: Victors in Burma (Helion)
Richard Duckett, Jungle Warrior: Britain’s Greatest SOE Commander (Chiselbury)
*Lauren Duval, The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence (University of North Carolina Press)
Brian Farrell, Misfire: British Empire Special Forces and the Defeat in Malaya in WW2 (University Press of Kansas)
David Grummitt, The Wars of the Roses: War and Martial Culture in England, 1455-87 (Oxford UP)
Andrew Hopper (ed.), The Civil War in 100 Objects (West Midlands History Ltd)
Jennine Hurl-Eamon, Childhood and War in Eighteenth Century Britain (Oxford UP)
Evert Kleynhans and Ian Van der Waag (eds), The Second World War in East Africa, 1940-41 (Brill)
*Phil McCarty, Point of Failure: British Brigadiers in France and Norway, 1940 (Helion)
*Steve McCarthy, An Astonishing Infantryman: The Life and Letters of Jack Hill, RWF, 1778-1838 (RWF Museum)
*Anne Maguire, Contact Zones of the First World War: Cultural Encounters across the British Empire (Cambridge UP)
* Nicola Martin, The British Army in Scotland and North America, 1745-75: Militarisation on the Fringes of the Empire (Palgrave Macmillan)
Matthew Miller, Assault Brigade: The 18th Australian Infantry Brigade in WWII (Cambridge UP)
Marc Milner, Second Front: Anglo-American Rivalry and the Hidden Story of the Normandy Campaign (Yale UP)
Joseph Moretz, The Development of British Amphibious Operations, 1882-1914 (Pen & Sword)
*Joel Morley, Joining Up in the Second World War: Enlistment, Masculinity and Memory of the Great War (Manchester UP)
Derek Plews, Shamrocks among the Poppies: Musa Qal’eh 2006 – A Bloody Siege and the Failures behind it (Helion)
*Patrick Ray, A Battle Lost and Won: Marston Moor, 1644 (Partizan Press)
Dermot Rooney, Slog or Swan: British Army Effectiveness in Operation Veritable, February and March 1945 (Helion)
Two titles received were of sufficient merit to be considered but as they are each part of a two-volume series with the concluding volume due in 2026 it was resolved to hold them over:
Jonathan Davies, The English Longbow: Investigating a Myth, 1298-1485 (Helion) Volume 1
Charles Fair, Richard Hendry and Tom Thorpe (eds), London Pride: The London Territorial Force in Peace and War, 1908-21 (Helion) Volume 1