A. O. Pollard. Epic Deeds of the RAF. London and Melbourne: Hutchinson and Co., 1940. Pollard, a VC winner and former RAF pilot, was mostly known for his crime thrillers (some of them airminded) but occasionally turned his hand to non-fiction. This is a fairly generic account of the first year of the Second World War in the air; the last chapter takes the story up to 15 September 1940 and so Pollard is confident enough to declare victory in the Battle of Britain. The style is exactly what you'd expect from the title.

Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal, eds. Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. France is too often neglected in Anglocentric accounts of the world wars so it's good to have a bit of balance. An impressive list of contributors of the likes of Jay Winter, Elizabeth Greenhalgh and Gary Sheffield look at the military relationship between France and Britain as well as the ways they have remembered their shared experiences of warfare in the decades since 1945. However, it would have been interesting to have some chapters on the interwar period, given that the relationship soured so quickly after 1918, yet remained of critical importance to both countries as they both prepared for and tried to avoid fighting side by side again against Germany.

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