Military History Matters has curated a list of 2024’s best military history titles: the nominees for this year’s MHM Book Awards. Our selection includes some of the best-researched, most-insightful, and most-readable titles reviewed and featured in the magazine over the last year.
But we need your help to select the winners!
Gold, silver, and bronze prizes are up for grabs in the race for MHM Book of the Year, which will be awarded to the title our readers feel has made the greatest all-round contribution to the study of military history.
Read the reviews of all 12 titles below, then click here to vote.
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.
Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief
Ronald Hutton
Yale University Press
Commander in Chief is the keenly awaited second volume in Ronald Hutton’s three part biography of Oliver Cromwell, Britain’s first and only commoner head of state. It traces his transformation from victorious Parliamentarian general to supreme national leader. Hutton’s book is a vivid portrait, more sharply focused on the manipulative, brutal side of Cromwell’s personality than most previous studies.
Click here to read the full review
The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler
Phillips Payson O’Brien
Viking
What forged the character of the most significant figures in the Second World War? How did the personalities of Hitler, Churchill, or Stalin affect their strategic choices? Part biography, part psychological profile, and part strategic history, The Strategists reminds us that it is leaders who actually determine strategy, with all of their strengths and weaknesses.
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Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England’s Greatest Warrior King
Dan Jones
Head of Zeus
Henry V ruled England for only nine years, and he died at the age of 35, but his reign was one of the most consequential in the country’s history. Medieval historian Dan Jones has produced this compelling and highly readable biography of the victor of Agincourt, whose various achievements and merits as a warrior are still being argued about today.
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Operation Biting: The 1942 Parachute Assault to Capture Hitler’s Radar
Max Hastings
William Collins
After books on Vietnam and Cuba, Max Hastings returns to the Second World War with a focus on the 1942 commando raid on German radar installations in France. Operation Biting makes compelling reading for anyone interested in how Churchill’s ambitions for raids on the coastline of occupied Europe were realised, through the lens of a single remarkable operation.
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Sword Beach: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Forgotten Victory
Stephen Fisher
Bantam Press
This debut book from Stephen Fisher extracts the story of Sword Beach on 6 June 1944 from the wider D-Day history and treats it – exactly as the title implies – as a distinct battle with its own unique identity. Engagingly written and firmly rooted in the evidence, Sword Beach places the experiences of the individual soldier, sailor, airman, or French civilian at its heart.
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1217: The Battles that Saved England
Catherine Hanley
Osprey Publishing
The reign of King John was a period of immense significance to English history. Catherine Hanley’s complex and exciting book 1217: The Battles that Saved England highlights the importance of the later years of John’s reign, after he repudiated Magna Carta, his famous agreement with his barons – but in doing so unleashed forces that he struggled to control.
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Normandy: The Sailors’ Story – A Naval History of D-Day and the Battle for France
Nick Hewitt
Yale University Press
The Allied navies played an essential role in ensuring that Operation Overlord was a success. In his absorbing book, released to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Nick Hewitt focuses on the nitty-gritty of the campaign, illuminating like never before the scale of what he calls the ‘Battle of the Seine Bay’, unquestionably the most significant naval engagement in history.
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Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless WWII Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka
Clare Mulley
Orion
Elżbieta Zawacka was driven by a belief in resistance and positive action. This latest book from Clare Mulley goes way beyond the astonishing life story of the Polish resistance fighter. For it also provides an important overview of 20th-century Poland, as well as a reminder of the horrors of tyranny and the price paid by individuals for realpolitik.
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Battle for the Island Kingdom: England’s Destiny 1000-1066
Don Hollway
Osprey Publishing
In the years up to 1066, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans all vied for the prize that was the English Crown. Don Hollway’s Battle for the Island Kingdom is a clear and compelling examination of the motivations and ambitions driving the period’s main actors, including Æthelred the Unready, King Harold Godwinson, and William the Conqueror.
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The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War
Nick Lloyd
Viking
British perceptions of the First World War have been profoundly shaped by the mud and blood of the Western Front – but, as is sometimes forgotten, fighting took place all across Europe and beyond. The Eastern Front, the second instalment in a trilogy by Nick Lloyd, is an extraordinary achievement in illuminating a poorly understood theatre of the conflict.
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A Nasty Little War: The West’s Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution
Anna Reid
John Murray
In the aftermath of the First World War, America, along with Britain, France, and several other Allied nations, sent troops to Russia in a half-hearted attempt to reverse the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Anna Reid provides an impressively balanced and sometimes grimly funny account of this largely forgotten conflict and its controversial legacy.
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Warriors in Scarlet: The Life and Times of the Last Redcoats
Ian Knight
Pan Macmillan
Warriors in Scarlet charts the history of the British Army in the first half of Queen Victoria’s reign – a period that saw troops in action across the globe, fighting wars in Africa, the Middle East, India, and China. With a gift for narrative and effective use of sources, Ian Knight locates his subject firmly in the wider context of 19th century society and imperial expansion.
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Voting will close on 17 March 2025, with the winners announced shortly after
