Annual Booklist 2019 : Prof. Helen Parr
Helen Parr is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Keele University, and author of Our Boys: A Story of a Paratrooper (Allen Lane, 2018) - a book about the Parachute Regiment and the experiences and aftermath of the 1982 Falklands War, and with a personal dimension. A long time in the making, but well-received!
Richard Vinen, National Service: A Nation in Uniform (Penguin, 2014) - a previous Templer medal winner, as well as winner of the Wolfson Prize for History: a book about the Army, but also about mid-century British society.
David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945-67 (Oxford 2011) - enormously informative and pioneering.
Jonathan Fennell, Fighting the People's War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (CUP, 2019) - a new history with impressive reach.
Yasmin Khan, The Raj at War: A People's History of India's Second World War (Penguin, 2015) - about the Indian Army, and warfare and society in India, expands our understanding of the Second World War in many ways.
Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing (Granta, 1999) - not just about the British army but a book that opened new ways of looking at military history.
A book that should be written but hasn't yet - now that's a question! I'd love to read something about the aftermath of Arnhem - so much about the battle itself, very little about what happened after...