The ballots have been cast, the votes have been counted, and we are delighted to announce the winners of the MHM Book Awards. We carefully curated a list of 2021’s best military-history titles and asked you, our readers, to vote for your favourite. Our selection included some of the best-researched, most-insightful, and most-readable titles reviewed and featured in the magazine over the last year.
You can read reviews of all 12 nominated books here.
This year’s awards are sponsored by Thomas Del Mar Ltd, one of the world’s leading auctioneers of antique arms, armour, and militaria, which has held specialist sales within this field since 2005.
In addition to organising auctions, the company assists with collection management, advises a number of European ancestral families, international museums and collectors, and publishes selectively within the field. Since 2017, the company has been working as part of Olympia Auctions, London’s specialist valuers and auctioneers. To find out more about their work, click here.
MHM BOOKS OF THE YEAR
WINNER – GOLD AWARD
At Close Range: life and death in an artillery regiment, 1939-45
Peter Hart
Profile Books
The direct experience of the gunners has long been a neglected aspect of World War II history. We have had plenty on life in a tank unit, or a fighter squadron, but there is a sense in which the role of the artillery has been seen as more mundane, perhaps less glamorous. Peter Hart insightfully addresses this imbalance.
Click here to read the full review.
WINNER – SILVER AWARD
The Reckoning: the defeat of Army Group South, 1944
Prit Buttar
Osprey Publishing
The Eastern Front remains the forgotten child of Western histories of the Second World War. Yet, as Prit Buttar argues in The Reckoning, the conflict here was existential. Two nations, with diametrically opposed ideologies, each fought not just for victory, but for the complete extinction of the other. His well-argued thesis is that 1944 was the pivotal year in hostilities between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht.
Click here to read the full review.
WINNER – BRONZE AWARD
The Pathfinders: the elite RAF force that turned the tide of WWII
Will Iredale
Ebury Publishing
‘The Pathfinders are the aces of Bomber Command,’ a British newspaper wrote in 1944. This well-written book tells the remarkable story of an extraordinary team of aviators and their support personnel who – to quote the book’s subtitle – turned the tide of the RAF’s bombing campaign over occupied Europe.
Click here to read the full review.
Thank you to everyone who took part in voting this year, and to our sponsors. To find out more about the magazine and how to subscribe, click here.
