Download or read book George Jellicoe written by Nicholas C. Jellicoe and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-07-21 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Jellicoe, son of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander of the British Grand Fleet at Jutland, was never compromised by his privileged upbringing. In this insightful biography, his son describes a life of action, drama, public service and controversy. George’s exploits with the newly formed SAS, as David Stirling’s second-in-command, and later commanding the SBS, make for fascinating reading. Over four years it embraced the North African and Mediterranean campaigns and culminated in the saving of a newly-liberated Athens from the communist guerrillas of ELAS. The brutality of Stalinist communism led him to join the post-war Foreign Office. In Washington he worked with Kim Philby and Donald Maclean in the cloak and dagger world of espionage. Resigning in 1958 so he could marry the woman he loved, he turned to politics. Although his ministerial career ended in 1973 after unwittingly become entangled with the Lambton scandal, he continued to sit in the House of Lords becoming ‘Father of the House’. He held numerous public appointments including President of the Royal Geographical Society, Chairman of the Medical Research Council, President of the SAS Regimental Association and the UK Crete Veterans Association. Thanks to the author’s research and access, this is more than a biography of a significant public figure. It provides fascinating detail of Special Forces operations and the characters of the countless figures with whom he mixed.
Download or read book A British Achilles written by Lorna Almonds Windmill and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2006-03-19 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Intriguing . . . describes a modest but exceptional man from whom the contemporary soldier, politician, and citizen can learn how to enjoy life (and how not to).” —The Spectator Son of the victor of Jutland, George Jellicoe has enjoyed power and privilege but never shirked his duty. His war exploits are legendary and, as a founder member of Stirling’s SAS and first commander of the Special Boat Service, he saw action a-plenty. A brigadier at twenty-six with a DSO and MC, he liberated Athens as the Germans withdrew and saved Greece from a Communist revolution. After the war, Jellicoe joined the Foreign Office and worked with spies Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, and Donald Maclean in Washington and on the Soviet Desk. His political life saw him in the Cabinet of the Heath Government and he is frank with his biographer over the issues and characters of his fellow ministers. Jellicoe’s Achilles heel is his weakness for, and attraction to, women. His resignation over an involvement with a prostitute was a national scandal, but he is refreshingly honest and devoid of self-justification. He remained an active member of the Lords pursuing a top-level business career. A British Achilles is a superb biography of a major public figure and exemplary wartime soldier.
Download or read book Jutland written by Nicholas Jellicoe and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2016-03-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A compelling, dramatic account of the Royal Navy's last great sea battle.” —Robert K. Massie, Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times–bestselling author of Dreadnought More than a century later, historians still argue about this controversial and misunderstood World War I naval battle off the coast of Denmark. It was the twentieth century’s first engagement of dreadnoughts—and while it left Britain in control of the North Sea, both sides claimed victory and decades of disputes followed, revolving around senior commanders Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty. This book not only retells the story of the battle from both a British and German perspective based on the latest research, but also helps clarify the context of Germany’s inevitable naval clash and the aftermath after the smoke had cleared.
Download or read book Hitler s Island War written by Julie Peakman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Highly Commended by the British Records Association for the 2019 Janette Harley Prize* In September 1943, at the height of World War II, the Aegean island of Leros became the site of the most pivotal battle of the Dodecanese campaign as the British tried, in vain, to retain control of the island. Over the course of two short months - from 15 September 1943 to 17 November 1943 - almost 1500 men lost their lives and hundreds more ended up in Prisoner-of-War camps. In this book, Julie Peakman, a modern-day resident of Leros, brings to life the story of the men caught up in the battle based on first-hand interviews and written accounts including diaries, letters and journals. She tells of the preparations of the soldiers leading up to the battle, the desperate hand-to-hand fighting, and the suffering endured from continual bombings. She also shows the extent of the men's despair at the allied surrender, the many subsequent daring escapes as well as the terrible years of incarceration for those who were captured and imprisoned. Many of the heart-rending accounts of the battle are told here for the first time, providing a unique eyewitness take on this forgotten corner of World War II.
Download or read book The SBS in World War II written by Gavin Mortimer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping history of Britain's Special Boat Squadron in World War II, drawing on veteran interviews and including rare photographs from the SAS Regimental Association. The Special Boat Squadron was Britain's most exclusive Special Forces unit during World War II, and yet its exploits have been largely forgotten. This book tells its story. Highly trained, totally secretive and utterly ruthless, the SBS was established as an entity in its own right in early 1943. Unlike its sister unit, which numbered more than 1,000 men, the SBS never comprised more than 100. Led by men such as the famed Victoria Cross recipient Anders Lassen, the SBS went from island to island in the Mediterranean, landing in the dead of night in small fishing boats and launching savage hit and run raids on the Germans. Through unrivalled access to the archives of the SAS Regimental Association and interviews with the surviving members of the unit, Gavin Mortimer has pieced together the dramatic feats of this elite fighting force. In this new and updated paperback edition, featuring additional content including new text and photographs, the unit and its members are finally granted the recognition that they so richly deserve.
Download or read book David Stirling written by Gavin Mortimer and published by Constable. This book was released on 2022-05-26 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristocrat, gambler, innovator and special forces legend, the life of David Stirling should need no retelling. His formation of the Special Air Service in the summer of 1941 led to a new form of warfare and Stirling is remembered as the father of special forces soldiering. But was he really a military genius or in fact a shameless self-publicist who manipulated people, and the truth, for this own ends? In this gripping and controversial biography Gavin Mortimer analyses Stirling's complex character: the childhood speech impediment that shaped his formative years, the pressure from his overbearing mother, his fraught relationship with his brother, Bill, and the jealousy and inferiority he felt in the presence of his SAS second-in-command, the cold-blooded killer Paddy Mayne. Stirling lived until old age, receiving a knighthood and plaudits from military forces around the world before his death in 1990. Yet as Mortimer dazzlingly shows, while Stirling was instrumental in selling the SAS to Churchill and senior officers, it was Mayne who really carried the regiment in the early days. Stirling was at best an incompetent soldier and at worst a foolhardy one, who jeopardised his men's live with careless talk and hare-brained missions. Drawing on interviews with SAS veterans who fought with Stirling and men who worked with him on his post-war projects, and examining recently declassified governments files about Stirling's involvement in Aden, Libya and GB75, Mortimer's riveting biography is incisive, bold, honest and written with his customary narrative panache. Impeccably researched and with the courage to challenge the mythical SAS 'brand', Mortimer brings to bear his unparalleled expertise as WW2's premier special forces historian to dig beneath the legend and reveal the real David Stirling, a man who dared and deceived.
Download or read book Happy Norman Volume II 1958 1979 written by Keith J. Norman and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man in Letters to my Grandchildren and Other Friends In Volume II the 30 year old Keith returns to the UK and begins a career as Commercial Director in the UK Atomic Energy Authority. When, after 13 years, the institutional demands get too restrictive, he quits and moves on to be Regional Director for the Caribbean and Central America in the Commonwealth Development and Finance Company. Operating from Kingston, Jamaica, Keith is responsible for the investments in a wide variety of industries: commercial properties, an airline, rice farming, pipeline manufacture, hotel management, a turtle farm and many others. This experience gives Keith a taste of true entrepreneurship and he decides to set up on his own. From the first steps along the road from being his own boss he has never deviated from this path. Commercial rose growing in the Dominical Republic, refinancing of a hotel in Santo Domingo, real estate development in Cayman, raising finance and managing a uranium mining startup in Saskatchewan – are just a few of the businesses he is involved with. One major commitment is to accept the appointment by the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands as Official Liquidator of a local Banking Group, comprising three banks and more than 100 operating subsidiary companies, ranging from a cattle breeding farm in Quebec to two inter-island trading vessels. Keith meets each challenge with his usual passion, dedication, energy and responsibility. The intensity of his work demands, though, has its price and leads to the breakdown of two marriages. This volume ends with Keith starting his own gold mining company and meeting the love of his life. Keith writes as honestly about his failures as he does about his successes. The analysis of the dictum of St Francis Xavier “Give me the child... and I will give you the man” continues through the search for the source of his decisions and whether those could be traced back to early experiences in his life.
Download or read book The Publishers Circular and Booksellers Record written by and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 858 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jack of All Trades written by Peter Inchbald and published by Guy Inchbald. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born into privilege, Peter Inchbald was an intellectual who spent the latter part of World War II as an Army Captain and the sole white man for miles around in the foothills of the Karakorums and the Himalaya. He became a minor artist of the postwar era before becoming an equally minor industrialist who helped bring modern design to the silverware and cutlery trade. Later in life he published a series of detective stories. There are really three books in here. The first is a personal memoir, the second a family history - an Appendix provides several family trees. The third is a serious record, full of fascinating historical detail. Inchbald wrote his memoir for many kinds of reader, from those who knew him intimately to distant cousins who had never heard of him and people, some not yet born, to whom he is a dim figure from the past.
Download or read book Patrick Leigh Fermor A Life in Letters written by Patrick Leigh Fermor and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first extensive collection of letters written by war hero and travel writing legend Patrick Leigh Fermor. Handsome, spirited, and erudite, Patrick Leigh Fermor was a war hero and one of the greatest travel writers of his generation. He was also a wonderful friend. The letters in this collection span almost seventy years, the first written ten days before Paddy’s twenty-fifth birthday, the last when he was ninety-four, and the correspondents include Deborah Devonshire, Nancy Mitford, Lawrence Durrell, Diana Cooper, and his lifelong companion, Joan Rayner. The letters exhibit many of Fermor’s most engaging characteristics: his lust for life, his unending curiosity, his lyrical descriptive powers, his love of language, his exuberance, and his tendency to get into scrapes—particularly when drinking and, quite separately, driving. Here are plenty of extraordinary stories: the hunt for Byron’s slippers in one of the remotest regions of Greece; an ignominious dismissal from Somerset Maugham’s Villa Mauresque; and hiding behind a bush to dub Dirk Bogarde into Greek during the shooting of Ill Met by Moonlight. The letters radiate warmth and gaiety; many are enhanced with witty illustrations and comic verse, while others contain riddles and puns. Every one of them entertains.
Download or read book Walch s Tasmanian almanack written by Walch J. and sons, ltd and published by . This book was released on 1862 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Christian Advocate written by and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rogue Heroes written by Ben Macintyre and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The incredible untold story of World War II’s greatest secret fighting force, as told by the modern master of wartime intrigue—now a limited series on Epix! “Reads like a mashup of The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape, with a sprinkling of Ocean’s 11 thrown in for good measure.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “Rogue Heroes is a ripping good read.”—Washington Post (10 Best Books of the Year) Britain’s Special Air Service—or SAS—was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young aristocrat whose aimlessness belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a World War II battlefield map and saw a protracted struggle, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite men, he could parachute behind Nazi lines and sabotage their airplanes and supplies. Defying his superiors’ conventional wisdom, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. Bringing his keen eye for detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to the SAS archives to shine a light on a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy.
Download or read book 2SAS written by Gavin Mortimer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-12 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on recently declassified files and interviews with veterans, this is a fascinating history of Bill Stirling and 2SAS – pioneering founders of modern special forces. David Stirling is the name synonymous with the wartime SAS, but the real brains behind the operation was in fact Bill Stirling, David's eldest brother. Bill was described in the SAS War Diary as a 'man from the shadows'; it was an apt description for, unlike his attention seeking brother, Bill shunned the spotlight. Now for the first time the truth – and the triumph – of 2SAS is revealed. Having originally joined the SOE in March 1940, Bill Stirling sailed for Cairo in 1941 and there had the idea for a small special forces unit to be led by his mercurial brother. But despite some success, David allowed the legendary 1SAS to drift under his leadership. Following his capture, Bill re-directed 2SAS, under his personal command, to the strategy he had originally envisaged: parachuting behind enemy lines to gather intelligence. Fully illustrated with rare and previously unpublished photographs, this compelling history details how 2SAS fought with ingenuity and aggression, from Italy and then into France before heading through Holland into Germany. The unit was capable of attacking by parachute, jeep or landing craft, establishing a template for future special forces' operations. Their feats have been overshadowed by the many books that have focused on David and 1SAS. 2SAS corrects this oversight, revealing that the real innovator was Bill Stirling – the true pioneer of Who Dares Wins.
Download or read book He Who Dares written by David Sutherland and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1998-08-12 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author is of the generation that went straight from school to fighting in World War 2. In He Who Dares, he describes some of the actions undertaken by the SAS and SBS and provides a glimpse of the work done by MI5 in the post-war era'
Download or read book Appendix to the Journal of the House of the Representatives written by New Zealand. Legislature. House of Representatives and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
