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 2023’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.
MHM BOOKS OF THE YEAR
WINNER – GOLD AWARD
The Savage Storm: the battle for Italy, 1943
James Holland
Bantam Press
James Holland seeks to explore the campaign to seize Italy from the build-up of the landings at Salerno in September 1943 through to the Battle of Ortona in December the same year. The significance of the Italian campaign is deeply illustrated for a new audience through a compelling narrative, making The Savage Storm a remarkable achievement by a historian at the height of his powers.
Click here to read the full review
WINNER – SILVER AWARD
Women in Intelligence: the hidden history of two world wars
Helen Fry
Yale Books
Helen Fry’s latest book explores the lives of the many hundreds of women who worked in intelligence-gathering in Britain and abroad over 30 years, as ‘intelligencers, codebreakers, spies, secret operatives, handlers, and double agents’. The detail of this book demonstrates not only the thoroughness of Fry’s research, but also that, without the contribution of women during the two world wars, the outcome of both of them would have been very different.
Click here to read the full review
WINNER – BRONZE AWARD
Footsloggers: an infantry battalion at war 1939-45
Peter Hart
Profile Books
Britain’s ‘poor bloody infantry’ did most of her fighting and dying during World War II. Peter Hart has assembled a portrait of one of these units, the 16th Durham Light Infantry (DLI), chronicling all the boredom, horror, and humour of their war. Footsloggers is an authentic account, whose universal truths about frontline soldiering will resonate with readers of every generation.
Click here to read the full review
The MHM Book Awards is sponsored by The Cultural Experience, a leading international tour company that offers expert-led holidays to historical and culturally significant destinations throughout the world. For more information about the company, please visit their website.
Thank you to everyone who took part in voting this year. To find out more about the magazine and how to subscribe, click here.
