Short, brisk and highly readable, this account stands out from the flood of books written for the Centenary of the Great War. In Why 1914?, Derek Robinson - trained as a historian, shortlisted for the Booker Prize - applies his novelist''s skills to asking how and why Europe hurried into such a massive disaster. He captures a world of kings and Kaisers, generals and infantrymen. None of them knew what a big European war meant. All the combatant nations assumed it would be short, and each expected to win. The roots of such folly began in the nineteenth century. Robinson traces the earliest warning signs, leading to a sudden crisis and an impulsive war that went massively wrong from the start. This book is the ideal introduction to the key question of the Great War: why did Europe explode?

North Africa, 1942. Dust, heat, thirst, flies. A good clean fight, for those who like that sort of thing, and some do. From an advanced landing field, striking hard and escaping fast, our old friends from Hornet Squadron (Piece of Cake) play Russian roulette, flying their clapped-out Tomahawks on ground-strafing forays. Meanwhile, on the ground, the men of Captain Lampard''s S.A.S. patrol drive hundreds of miles behind enemy lines to plant bombs on German aircraft. This is the story of a war of no glamour and few heroes, in a setting often more lethal than the enemy.

They joined an R.A.F. known as ''the best flying club in the world'', but when war pitches the young pilots of 409 Squadron into battle over Germany, their training, tactics and equipment are soon found wanting, their twin-engined bombers obsolete from the off. Chances of completing a 30-operation tour? One in three. At best. Robinson''s crooked salute to the dogged heroes of the R.A.F.''s early bombing campaign is a wickedly humourous portrait of men doing their duty in flying death traps, fully aware, in those dark days of war, there was nothing else to do but dig in and hang on.

Flight Lieutenant Silk, a twice-decorated Lancaster pilot in WW II, rejoins the R.A.F. and qualifies to fly the Vulcan bomber. Piloting a Vulcan is an unforgettable experience: no other aircraft comes close to matching its all-round performance. And as bombers go, it''s drop-dead gorgeous. But there''s a catch. The Vulcan has only one role: to make a second strike. To act in retaliation for a Russian nuclear attack. Silk knows that knows that if he ever flies his Vulcan in anger, he''ll be flying from a smoking wasteland, a Britain obliterated. But in the mad world of Mutually Assured Destruction, the Vulcan is the last - the only - deterrent. Derek Robinson returns with another rip-roaring, gung-ho R.A.F. adventure, one that exposes and confronts the brinkmanship and sabre-rattling of the Cold War Era.

From the Phoney War of 1939 to the Battle of Britain in 1940, the pilots of Hornet Squadron learn their lessons the hard way. Hi-jinks are all very well on the ground, but once in a Hurricane''s cockpit, the best killers keep their wits close. Newly promoted Commanding Officer Fanny Barton has a job on to whip the Hornets into shape before they face the Luftwaffe''s seasoned pilots. And sometimes Fighter Command, with its obsolete tactics and stiff doctrines, is the real menace. As with all Robinson''s novels, the raw dialogue, rich black humour and brilliantly rendered, adrenalin-packed dogfights bring the Battle of Britain, and the brave few who fought it, to life.

Fresh from school in June 1916, Lieutenant Oliver Paxton''s first solo flight is to lead a formation of biplanes across the Channel to join Hornet Squadron in France.

Five days later, he crash-lands at his destination, having lost his map, his ballast and every single plane in his charge. To his C.O. he''s an idiot, to everyone else - especially the tormenting Australian who shares his billet - a pompous bastard.

This is 1916, the year of the Somme, giving Paxton precious little time to grow from innocent to veteran.

It''s 1917, and Captain Stanley Woolley joins an R.F.C. squadron whose pilots are starting to fear the worst: their war over the Western Front may go on for years. A pilot''s life is usually short, so while it lasts it is celebrated strenuously.

Distractions from the brutality of the air war include British nurses; eccentric Russian pilots; bureaucratic battles over the plum-jam ration; rat-hunting with Very pistols; and the C.O.''s patent, potent cocktail, known as ''Hornet''s Sting''.

But as the summer offensives boil up, none of these can offer any lasting comfort.

1941. Hitler rampant. Spain neutral. Madrid, like Casablanca, the launching pad for spies from all sides. The most daring and audacious is codenamed ''Eldorado''. Young, inexperienced, hotheaded, he had no right to survive, let alone succeed. Now his network is the most valuable in Europe, and the fates of armies lie in his hands.But who does he work for? Or is he only in it for himself? One thing''s for sure. War may be a dirty business, but it certainly brings home the bacon. Based on a true story, The Eldorado Network is the first novel in Derek Robinson''s acclaimed Luis Cabrillo Quartet. A tense and gripping espionage thriller from a master of action and suspense.

1943. British Intelligence has finally got to grips with the Eldorado Network, Germany''s most successful spy ring. It turns out to be one man in a small room in Lisbon, inventing phoney (but convincing) reports. For two years he has pulled the wool over German Intelligence''s eyes, and made a killing. The British soon find that Eldorado''s a real handful. They bring him to England, so they can manage his dispatches, and discover that living with a genius can be a headache. Eldorado rapidly creates a team of top sub-agents around him. None of them exists. But power - even imaginary power - is intoxicating, and he begins to treat his fake sub-agents as if real. Big trouble ahead. Artillery of Lies is the hair-raising sequel to The Eldorado Network, all the more funny for being soundly based on the true story of a real Second World War spy.

It''s 1953, and Luis Cabrillo has burned through the small fortune he earned from both British and German Intelligence in WW2. Now he has only his wits, his confidence, and his dazzling skills at lying and cheating to rely on.Teaming up with Julie Conroy (a corker of a New Yorker), he follows his wartime instincts and goes where arrogance breeds wealth: to Washington D.C. and Senator Joe McCarthy, high priest of America''s holy war on Red treachery. Joe''s problem is a sudden shortage of treachery. Luis can help him out, but for dollars. Big dollars. And when the C.I.A. gets into the act, followed by the K.G.B., F.B.I., M.I.6. and the Mafia, it makes for an explosive mixture ripe for a spark. In Red Rag Blues Derek Robinson lends his signature wit to the hysteria and paranoia of the McCarthy years, toying with the notion that the world''s most powerful nation is occasionally its most stupid.

World War One pilots were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolised them as gallant young heroes. At just twenty-three, Major Stanley Woolley is the old man and commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron. He abhors any notion of chivalry in the clouds and is determined to obliterate the decent, gentlemanly outlook of his young, public school-educated pilots - for their own good. But as the war goes on he is forced to throw greener and greener pilots into the meat grinder. Goshawk Squadron finds its gallows humour and black camaraderie no defence against a Spandau bullet to the back of the head.

The war to end all wars, people said in 1918. Not for long. By 1919, White Russians were fighting Bolshevik Reds for control of their country, and Winston Churchill (then Secretary of State for War) wanted to see Communism ''strangled in its cradle''. So a volunteer R.A.F. squadron, flying Sopwith Camels, went there to duff up the Reds. ''There''s a splendid little war going on,'' a British staff officer told them. ''You''ll like it.'' Looked like fun.

But the war was neither splendid nor little. It was big and it was brutal, a grim conflict of attrition, marked by incompetence and corruption. Before it ended, the squadron wished that both sides would lose. If that was a joke, nobody was laughing.

Here, for the first time, is an intimate and fascinating portrait of Rudolf Nureyev off-stage - a man who was an exacting, unpredictable, parsimonious and often immature individual, yet who, at the same time, aroused great affection in a host of friends. Simon Robinson frankly recalls his eventful year working for Nureyev. He did everything for this hopelessly impractical dancer except be his lover, much to Nureyev''s disappointment. It was the Russian''s insatiable sexual appetite that eventually destroyed him.Nureyev had six houses on three continents but no staff in any of them and he couldn''t cook, drive, write a letter, tie a necktie or even change a light bulb. In 1990 Simon Robinson, until then professional crew on a racing yacht, became his PA. For the next twelve months they travelled from the Caribbean to America to Europe, living in luxury in Nureyev''s New York and Paris apartments and in spartan isolation on his tiny Mediterranean island. Nureyev''s explosive nature was exhausting to live with and many times during their year together Robinson nearly quit - and Nureyev nearly sacked him. It didn''t happen, however, because Nureyev needed his PA''s calm reliability to ballast his own rocky life, and because Robinson knew that genius must make its own rules.

Rock Springs, Kentucky. A backwater miles from civilisation, but so far upstream that the riverboats can go no further, and with plenty of farmland there for the taking. Among the pioneers who choose to build their homes here are the Hudds and the Killicks, two families destined to spend the next century despising one another. Kentucky Blues is a powerful, unsentimental depiction of life through several generations, widely considered to be Robinson''s most ambitious work. Told with his trademark dark humour, it is an epic tale of one small community''s journey from its foundation in the 1820s, through the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, to the dawn of the modern age.

Mikhail Starin, Head of Soviet Intelligence in London, is a ruthless, cold-hearted individual. Known to have killed 24 people, including his own mother, he''s now determined to get his hands on a hard-to-stabilize nuclear formula. There''s only one thing for British Intelligence to do: send him back to Russia as quickly as possible. They scheme to leak details of a top-level Western military secret - knowing that when the Russians discover the secret is a double cross, Starin is history. Unfortunately there''s only one man available to oversee the job: David Hale; young, honourable, but completely out of his depth. Rotten with Honour is a Cold War espionage thriller told with the trademark wit of Derek Robinson, bestselling and Booker-shortlisted author of Goshawk Squadron.

Jersey, 1944. Lieutenant Earl Kramer, sole survivor of a ditched USAF bomber, crawls out of the sea one night and cuts the throat of a German sentry. Big mistake. Jersey is under Nazi occupation, and the lives of its inhabitants depend on an uneasy co-existence with their oppressors. Though Kramer''s motives were entirely patriotic, to the islanders he presents a terrifying risk to their very survival. But to Kramer, a man governed by an overriding sense of duty, this stronghold of Hitler''s armies proves too irresistible a target to ignore... Kramer''s War is a powerful novel about the savagery of war, from the bestselling and Booker-shortlisted author of Goshawk Squadron.

Short, brisk and highly readable, this account stands out from the flood of books written for the Centenary of the Great War. In Why 1914?, Derek Robinson - trained as a historian, shortlisted for the Booker Prize - applies his novelist''s skills to asking how and why Europe hurried into such a massive disaster. He captures a world of kings and Kaisers, generals and infantrymen. None of them knew what a big European war meant. All the combatant nations assumed it would be short, and each expected to win. The roots of such folly began in the nineteenth century. Robinson traces the earliest warning signs, leading to a sudden crisis and an impulsive war that went massively wrong from the start. This book is the ideal introduction to the key question of the Great War: why did Europe explode?

North Africa, 1942. Dust, heat, thirst, flies. A good clean fight, for those who like that sort of thing, and some do. From an advanced landing field, striking hard and escaping fast, our old friends from Hornet Squadron (Piece of Cake) play Russian roulette, flying their clapped-out Tomahawks on ground-strafing forays. Meanwhile, on the ground, the men of Captain Lampard''s S.A.S. patrol drive hundreds of miles behind enemy lines to plant bombs on German aircraft. This is the story of a war of no glamour and few heroes, in a setting often more lethal than the enemy.

They joined an R.A.F. known as ''the best flying club in the world'', but when war pitches the young pilots of 409 Squadron into battle over Germany, their training, tactics and equipment are soon found wanting, their twin-engined bombers obsolete from the off. Chances of completing a 30-operation tour? One in three. At best. Robinson''s crooked salute to the dogged heroes of the R.A.F.''s early bombing campaign is a wickedly humourous portrait of men doing their duty in flying death traps, fully aware, in those dark days of war, there was nothing else to do but dig in and hang on.

Flight Lieutenant Silk, a twice-decorated Lancaster pilot in WW II, rejoins the R.A.F. and qualifies to fly the Vulcan bomber. Piloting a Vulcan is an unforgettable experience: no other aircraft comes close to matching its all-round performance. And as bombers go, it''s drop-dead gorgeous. But there''s a catch. The Vulcan has only one role: to make a second strike. To act in retaliation for a Russian nuclear attack. Silk knows that knows that if he ever flies his Vulcan in anger, he''ll be flying from a smoking wasteland, a Britain obliterated. But in the mad world of Mutually Assured Destruction, the Vulcan is the last - the only - deterrent. Derek Robinson returns with another rip-roaring, gung-ho R.A.F. adventure, one that exposes and confronts the brinkmanship and sabre-rattling of the Cold War Era.

From the Phoney War of 1939 to the Battle of Britain in 1940, the pilots of Hornet Squadron learn their lessons the hard way. Hi-jinks are all very well on the ground, but once in a Hurricane''s cockpit, the best killers keep their wits close. Newly promoted Commanding Officer Fanny Barton has a job on to whip the Hornets into shape before they face the Luftwaffe''s seasoned pilots. And sometimes Fighter Command, with its obsolete tactics and stiff doctrines, is the real menace. As with all Robinson''s novels, the raw dialogue, rich black humour and brilliantly rendered, adrenalin-packed dogfights bring the Battle of Britain, and the brave few who fought it, to life.

Fresh from school in June 1916, Lieutenant Oliver Paxton''s first solo flight is to lead a formation of biplanes across the Channel to join Hornet Squadron in France.

Five days later, he crash-lands at his destination, having lost his map, his ballast and every single plane in his charge. To his C.O. he''s an idiot, to everyone else - especially the tormenting Australian who shares his billet - a pompous bastard.

This is 1916, the year of the Somme, giving Paxton precious little time to grow from innocent to veteran.

It''s 1917, and Captain Stanley Woolley joins an R.F.C. squadron whose pilots are starting to fear the worst: their war over the Western Front may go on for years. A pilot''s life is usually short, so while it lasts it is celebrated strenuously.

Distractions from the brutality of the air war include British nurses; eccentric Russian pilots; bureaucratic battles over the plum-jam ration; rat-hunting with Very pistols; and the C.O.''s patent, potent cocktail, known as ''Hornet''s Sting''.

But as the summer offensives boil up, none of these can offer any lasting comfort.

1941. Hitler rampant. Spain neutral. Madrid, like Casablanca, the launching pad for spies from all sides. The most daring and audacious is codenamed ''Eldorado''. Young, inexperienced, hotheaded, he had no right to survive, let alone succeed. Now his network is the most valuable in Europe, and the fates of armies lie in his hands.But who does he work for? Or is he only in it for himself? One thing''s for sure. War may be a dirty business, but it certainly brings home the bacon. Based on a true story, The Eldorado Network is the first novel in Derek Robinson''s acclaimed Luis Cabrillo Quartet. A tense and gripping espionage thriller from a master of action and suspense.

1943. British Intelligence has finally got to grips with the Eldorado Network, Germany''s most successful spy ring. It turns out to be one man in a small room in Lisbon, inventing phoney (but convincing) reports. For two years he has pulled the wool over German Intelligence''s eyes, and made a killing. The British soon find that Eldorado''s a real handful. They bring him to England, so they can manage his dispatches, and discover that living with a genius can be a headache. Eldorado rapidly creates a team of top sub-agents around him. None of them exists. But power - even imaginary power - is intoxicating, and he begins to treat his fake sub-agents as if real. Big trouble ahead. Artillery of Lies is the hair-raising sequel to The Eldorado Network, all the more funny for being soundly based on the true story of a real Second World War spy.

It''s 1953, and Luis Cabrillo has burned through the small fortune he earned from both British and German Intelligence in WW2. Now he has only his wits, his confidence, and his dazzling skills at lying and cheating to rely on.Teaming up with Julie Conroy (a corker of a New Yorker), he follows his wartime instincts and goes where arrogance breeds wealth: to Washington D.C. and Senator Joe McCarthy, high priest of America''s holy war on Red treachery. Joe''s problem is a sudden shortage of treachery. Luis can help him out, but for dollars. Big dollars. And when the C.I.A. gets into the act, followed by the K.G.B., F.B.I., M.I.6. and the Mafia, it makes for an explosive mixture ripe for a spark. In Red Rag Blues Derek Robinson lends his signature wit to the hysteria and paranoia of the McCarthy years, toying with the notion that the world''s most powerful nation is occasionally its most stupid.

World War One pilots were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolised them as gallant young heroes. At just twenty-three, Major Stanley Woolley is the old man and commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron. He abhors any notion of chivalry in the clouds and is determined to obliterate the decent, gentlemanly outlook of his young, public school-educated pilots - for their own good. But as the war goes on he is forced to throw greener and greener pilots into the meat grinder. Goshawk Squadron finds its gallows humour and black camaraderie no defence against a Spandau bullet to the back of the head.

The war to end all wars, people said in 1918. Not for long. By 1919, White Russians were fighting Bolshevik Reds for control of their country, and Winston Churchill (then Secretary of State for War) wanted to see Communism ''strangled in its cradle''. So a volunteer R.A.F. squadron, flying Sopwith Camels, went there to duff up the Reds. ''There''s a splendid little war going on,'' a British staff officer told them. ''You''ll like it.'' Looked like fun.

But the war was neither splendid nor little. It was big and it was brutal, a grim conflict of attrition, marked by incompetence and corruption. Before it ended, the squadron wished that both sides would lose. If that was a joke, nobody was laughing.

Here, for the first time, is an intimate and fascinating portrait of Rudolf Nureyev off-stage - a man who was an exacting, unpredictable, parsimonious and often immature individual, yet who, at the same time, aroused great affection in a host of friends. Simon Robinson frankly recalls his eventful year working for Nureyev. He did everything for this hopelessly impractical dancer except be his lover, much to Nureyev''s disappointment. It was the Russian''s insatiable sexual appetite that eventually destroyed him.Nureyev had six houses on three continents but no staff in any of them and he couldn''t cook, drive, write a letter, tie a necktie or even change a light bulb. In 1990 Simon Robinson, until then professional crew on a racing yacht, became his PA. For the next twelve months they travelled from the Caribbean to America to Europe, living in luxury in Nureyev''s New York and Paris apartments and in spartan isolation on his tiny Mediterranean island. Nureyev''s explosive nature was exhausting to live with and many times during their year together Robinson nearly quit - and Nureyev nearly sacked him. It didn''t happen, however, because Nureyev needed his PA''s calm reliability to ballast his own rocky life, and because Robinson knew that genius must make its own rules.

Rock Springs, Kentucky. A backwater miles from civilisation, but so far upstream that the riverboats can go no further, and with plenty of farmland there for the taking. Among the pioneers who choose to build their homes here are the Hudds and the Killicks, two families destined to spend the next century despising one another. Kentucky Blues is a powerful, unsentimental depiction of life through several generations, widely considered to be Robinson''s most ambitious work. Told with his trademark dark humour, it is an epic tale of one small community''s journey from its foundation in the 1820s, through the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, to the dawn of the modern age.

Mikhail Starin, Head of Soviet Intelligence in London, is a ruthless, cold-hearted individual. Known to have killed 24 people, including his own mother, he''s now determined to get his hands on a hard-to-stabilize nuclear formula. There''s only one thing for British Intelligence to do: send him back to Russia as quickly as possible. They scheme to leak details of a top-level Western military secret - knowing that when the Russians discover the secret is a double cross, Starin is history. Unfortunately there''s only one man available to oversee the job: David Hale; young, honourable, but completely out of his depth. Rotten with Honour is a Cold War espionage thriller told with the trademark wit of Derek Robinson, bestselling and Booker-shortlisted author of Goshawk Squadron.

Jersey, 1944. Lieutenant Earl Kramer, sole survivor of a ditched USAF bomber, crawls out of the sea one night and cuts the throat of a German sentry. Big mistake. Jersey is under Nazi occupation, and the lives of its inhabitants depend on an uneasy co-existence with their oppressors. Though Kramer''s motives were entirely patriotic, to the islanders he presents a terrifying risk to their very survival. But to Kramer, a man governed by an overriding sense of duty, this stronghold of Hitler''s armies proves too irresistible a target to ignore... Kramer''s War is a powerful novel about the savagery of war, from the bestselling and Booker-shortlisted author of Goshawk Squadron.