Annual Booklist 2025 : Contributors
Once again, SAHR offers a series of suggestions for books to add to your Christmas wish-lists along with some inspiration for the still-to-be-written best-sellers and prize winners of the future.
Professor Kevin Linch
Kevin Linch is Professor of British History at the University of Leeds, and specialises on Britain's armed forces in the Napoleonic period and their interaction with wider social and cultural trends. He won the 2024 Templer Medal with his book The History of the British Army, 1783-1815, and was made a Fellow of the Society in 2025 in recognition of his work on the Georgian Army Officers database (https://www.georgianarmyofficers.org/).
Lieutenant General (retired) Sir John Kiszely
John Kiszely served in the British army for forty years. His operational service included Northern Ireland, the Falkland Islands, Bosnia and Iraq. He is a former Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff and Director General of the UK Defence Academy. On leaving the army he was a visiting research fellow at the Changing Character of War Centre, University of Oxford, and for three years a visiting professor in war studies at Kings College, London. His first book, Anatomy of a Campaign: The British Fiasco in Norway 1940, won the 2017 Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History. His latest book, General Hastings 'Pug' Ismay: Soldier, Statesman, Diplomat, was a runner-up for the 2025 Templer Medal.
Professor Jennine Hurl-Eamon
Dr Jennine Hurl-Eamon is Professor of History at Trent University in Canada. She is the author of four books, including the recent Childhood and War in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2025), and Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century (2014), both published with Oxford University Press. She has also co-edited a six-volume series with Lynn MacKay called Women, Families, and the British Army, 1700-1880. She is currently working on a monograph dealing with the boy regiments established by the Duke of York in 1797.
Dr Stephen Quick
Stephen Quick is a lecturer at the Abu Dhabi-based Rabdan Academy and holds a PhD from King’s College London. Living in the Middle East for over a decade, his research interests include Britain’s post-World War Two counterinsurgency campaigns and Arabian Peninsula history. His book The Dhofar War: British Covert Campaigning in Arabia 1965-75 (University of Exeter Press, 2024) was a finalist for the 2024 SAHR Chapple Prize.
Peter Swabey
Peter read History with Archaeology at the University of Leeds, where his dissertation was on the Zulu War, and has read widely on military history since that time. He considered making archaeology his profession, but opted instead for an indoor job with no heavy lifting and has spent the last forty years as a Chartered Secretary, managing the governance of a variety of listed and unlisted companies. He is currently Policy and Research Director at the Chartered Governance Institute, and has been Hon. Secretary of SAHR since 2024.
Major General (retired) Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter
Evelyn Webb-Carter was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards in 1964, serving in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, and retired from the Army in 2001 as Major-General commanding the Household Division and GOC London District. He has served as Chairman of the Waterloo Association since 1997, and founded the Waterloo200 organisation that coordinated the events to mark the bicentenary of the battle. He was made a Fellow of the Society for Army Historical Research in 2025.
Andrew Young
Andrew Young is a former Royal Navy officer specialising in professional military education. He has worked at the Royal United Services Institute on Whitehall, and taught on courses at Britannia Royal Naval College, Commando Training Centre Royal Marines, Joint Services Command and Staff College, and RAF College Cranwell. Currently the Fellowships Officer for the Navy’s internal think tank, the RN Strategic Studies Centre (RNSSC), he is also a part-time PhD candidate at King’s College London working on amphibious warfare during the eighteenth century. His lecture on the 1757 Rochefort Expedition formed part of SAHR’s 2025 online talks programme.
Zeb Micic
Zeb Micic has been a member of the Society’s Council since 2023. He teaches History and Politics at Sherborne School, and is working on a history of militarism in Victorian public schools.
Professor Jessica Meyer
Jessica Meyer is Professor of British Social and Cultural History at the University of Leeds. Her research interests lie at the intersection of the histories of gender, particularly masculinity, medicine and warfare. She is the author of Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan) and An Equal Burden: The Men of the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War (Oxford University Press, available open access). She has also published extensively on the histories of war disability, popular fiction and military medical service. A keynote speaker at our recent research conference, Jessica was made a Fellow of the Society in 2025 in recognition of her contribution to the fields in which she works.
Matthew Taylor
Matthew Taylor is a Civil Servant who has worked for the British House of Lords for over a decade. A history enthusiast with particular focus on little-known stories that confound common historical narratives; his time at the heart of British politics has taught him the value of history in allowing us to better know ourselves today, and work toward a greater future. He is the author of Black Redcoats: The Corps of Colonial Marines, 1814-1816, and recently spoke about his research for that book as part of the Society’s online talks programme.
Dr Paul Knight
Paul Knight is an Army Reserve officer, currently employed as the SO2 Historical Analysis at the Land Warfare Centre. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Liverpool and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Research interests include the Territorial Force/Army, the First World War in Middle East especially Mesopotamia, and the American War of Independence, plus whatever topic the army gives him to research. His books include Lessons from the Mud: 55th (West Lancashire) Division at the Third Battle of Ypres and A Very Fine Regiment: The 47th Foot during the American War of Independence, 1773-1783. He is currently working on a book on the Second Battle of Ramadi, 1917.
Dr James Cook OBE
Dr James Cook OBE is the current Chair of the SAHR, having recently retired after a 30-year career in the British Army as a Royal Artillery Officer and latterly as an Army HR professional. By accident, he completed a PhD at King's College London in 2020 entitled, ‘The Transformation of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front 1914-1918, via a Process of Learning - Lessons, Doctrine, and Training’. The research allowed James to better understand that victory in warfare is not always about military genius, incredible technology, and luck, but often about how you think about warfare, codify your thoughts into doctrine, and then train your army accordingly. The thesis steps away from many of the classic tropes of the First World War and focuses on some very ordinary doctrine writers and less well-known senior leaders who had the vision to invent/codify a new way of warfare.