Campbell McCutcheon – författare

The islands surrounding Scapa Flow made one of Britain's best natural harbours, while the location at the north of Scotland protected the approaches to the North Sea and Atlantic. The naval base was important during both wars but what makes Scapa Flow famous is its wrecks, the remains of a German fleet, which once numbered some 74 vessels, most of which were scuttled in 1919, as well as the war graves of HMS Royal Oak and HMS Vanguard. The wrecks of the navy ships still survive, along with eight German warships for which a second war came and prevented salvage. Now a divers' paradise, the wrecks of Scapa Flow bring divers from all over the world and employ many in Orkney itself. This is the story of the ships of Scapa Flow, their sinking and their salvage, using many previously unseen images of the recovery and subsequent removal of many of the German battleships and cruisers to Rosyth dockyard in Fife for breaking up.

Find out how a pilot was instructed in flying a Battle of Britain fighter, using the original Pilot's Notes for the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane, as well as Air Ministry flying notes on captured Messerschmitt Bf 109s. See how each compares, view their cockpits and learn how they fly. All three aircraft handled superbly, and the Pilot's Notes help give an idea of what it was like to fl y in a real Second World War fighter aircraft. The aircraft were designed and first flew within months of each other, and all served throughout the war. More than 300 pilots on the Eastern Front shot down over 100 Soviet aircraft, each using Messerschmitt Bf 109s, while British aces in the Spitfire and Hurricane included Douglas Bader, Roland Beaumont, Neville Duke and Richard Hillary.

Bradshaw’s Guide of 1863 was the staple book on what’s what and where’s where for the mid-Victorians and it gives the modern reader a unique insight into the world of the nineteenth-century railway travellers. Built primarily to provide a passenger service, the railways of Ireland would go on to open up the country to tourism in new ways. They also brought communities closer together and many journeys that once took days to complete could now be undertaken in hours. This illustrated guide records the sights to be seen in the towns and cities encountered along the various routes.John Christopher and Campbell McCutcheon take us on the railways of Ireland, using contemporary Victorian and Edwardian photographs and postcards to illustrate the scenes that the readers of Bradshaw’s Guide to the Railways would have experienced. This volume covers several of Ireland’s railways at the time, including the Great Southern Railway, the Dublin & Kingstown Railway, the Great Southern & Western Railway, the Midland Great Western Railway, and including those of Northern Ireland.

Conscription, a feature of the British Army in wartime, did not cease with the end of the Second World War. For almost another two decades, men were conscripted for National Service and two years in the armed forces.For many it brought some discipline to their lives, for others, they got to see the world. Some fought in action in Cyprus, Malaya, Kenya, Korea and in many other far-flung parts of the dwindling empire. During the Cold War, it also ensured Britain could call on a professionally trained group of men in times of war.It was all to end by the early 1960s, but hundreds of thousands of men were trained using the information enclosed within the pages of The National Serviceman’s Handbook, a compilation of the various army training manuals issued throughout National Service.

Ubiquitous in ever supermarket and corner shop, it is hard to imagine a world without bananas. But it was once so! Britain's love affair with the humble banana is as much the story of Elders & Fyffes, a company set up to import the golden fruit into the United Kingdom. Originally, British imports were of the small Cavendish banana from the Canaries but the British Government was keen to see some trade from the West Indies and in 1901 Elders & Fyffes was formed to import and distribute bananas. The first ships arrived in 1902 and the company grew and expanded. During both world wars, the fleet of Elders & Fyffes served their country as armed merchant cruisers. The ships themselves were a common sight in the ports of Avonmouth, Bristol, Southampton, Portsmouth, Garston, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Cardiff.

The end of the Second World War heralded the start of a new war. It was the war in name only, fought out by the superpowers through propaganda, and using smaller nations as pawns in the military build-up that became known as the Cold War. New and chilling phrases entered the vocabulary - mutually assured destruction, nuclear proliferation, hydrogen bomb, airburst and fallout. The UK Government, like that of many other nations, considered the effects on the population at large. Plans were drawn up, secret nuclear bunkers built and a new civil defence network created to counter the threat of all-out nuclear war. Manuals were issued to those in the know and the civilian populace became used to the sounds of nuclear air-raid warning sirens being tested, of adverts informing them how to convert their house into a shelter, what to do with dead bodies, how to counteract radiation sickness, etc. The government also issued a whole series of pamphlets and educational films for the masses. Out of these has come Protect and Survive - The Civil Defence Manual, which brings together, for the first time, the Government's own pamphlets for Civil Defence volunteers and the populace at large.

Two weeks before Dunkirk, Anthony Eden, Minister of War, announced to the nation on BBC radio his concept of a Local Defence Volunteer force. It was a grim time! The Germans were routing the French and British in Belgium and France, Norway was lost, and within two weeks, the cream of Britain's fighting forces would be weaponless and kit-less, seeking rescue from the beaches of Dunkirk. Eden's words echoed around every living room in the country: 'In order to volunteer, what you have to do is give in your name at your local police station; and then, as and when we want you, we will let you know.' The motley assortment of men, most either too old or too young to join the army, became the nucleus of the Home Guard. Untried and without weapons, they would be called upon to halt the invasion that Hitler planned as he stood on the cliffs near Calais, eyeing Britain and its populace as his next conquest. Over a period of a few months, this rag-tag group was armed, uniformed and trained, using the Home Guard Manual. Learning how to construct booby traps, destroy tanks, ambush the enemy, survive in the open, use basic camouflage, read maps and send signals, the fledgling volunteer was turned into a veritable fighting machine, leaving the army to retrain, re-equip and fight elsewhere.