John Hersey. Hiroshima. London: Penguin, 2001 [1946]. One of the most important pieces of journalism of the 20th century; with a new final chapter written by Hersey four decades later. I'm teaching Hiroshima mon amour again this semester and so this might be useful preparation.

Robert A. Pape. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996. One of those books everyone cites but I haven't read yet. More operational analysis-type stuff than pure history. Concentrates on the Second World War (offensives against Germany and Japan), Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War, but has an interesting appendix discussing other attempts at coercive strategic bombing, from the Gotha raids on.

Nick Smart. Neville Chamberlain. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2010. I'm not a big reader of biographies, partly because they often aren't 'historical' enough and partly because they usually aren't about the people I'm interested in. This one satisfies on both counts.

Peter J. Bowler. Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2009. How and what the public learned about science was important in an age of technological warfare, and this has a decent number of entries in the index under 'military applications of science'.

Tom Buchanan. The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain: War, Loss and Memory. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2007. A collection of essays by Buchanan, including a couple on George Steer (of Guernica fame) and John Langdon-Davies (of Barcelona less-fame).

Marion Girard. A Strange and Formidable Weapon: British Responses to World War I Poison Gas. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. Covers both military and civilian responses to gas, and the final chapter looks at the public debate about gas between the wars. Wish I'd had this a year ago!

Peter Sloterdijk. Terror from the Air. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009. Sloterdijk -- not a historian, but an intellectual -- argues that the 20th century started on 22 April 1915 at Ypres, i.e. because of the use of poison gas. Trivia: this is the first book I've ever bought which was published in Los Angeles.

Christopher Andrew. The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5. London: Allen Lane, 2009. Most valuable for me on the Edwardian spy mania, but looks like a fun read for the rest of the thousand-odd pages.

R. V. Jones. Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945. London: Penguin, 2009 [1978]. A reprint of this important autobiography; no doubt it's been superseded as a history of the wizard war but at the time it was groundbreaking.

Evelyn August. The Black-out Book: One-hundred-and-one Black-out Nights' Entertainment. Oxford and New York: Osprey, 2009 [1939]. A facsimile reprint containing jokes, puzzles, games, trivia and other bits and pieces: giving a lower-brow (and I'm sure more accurate) impression of what people actually did in shelters than this. Evelyn August was the pseudonym of Sydney and Muriel Box.

I bought these at Foyles a few hours before my plane was due to depart, and had them mailed to me. Not necessarily the cheapest way to go, but I was in a hurry!

Jeremy Black. Rethinking Military History. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2004. Probably nobody is better qualified to write a book with this title -- I've only got 60 or 70 books to go before I've got his entire opus.

Bob Clarke. Britain's Cold War. Stroud: The History Press, 2009. Looks like a useful overview of, well, Britain's Cold War -- civil defence, the American presence, the Royal Observer Corps, and so on.

Sebastian Cox and Peter Gray, eds. Air Power History: Turning Points from Kitty Hawk to Kosovo. Abingdon and New York: Frank Cass, 2002. A collection of essays on diverse topics by historians such as Tami Biddle, John Ferris, James Corum and John Buckley.

Michael D. Gordin. Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Having said I needed to add this book to my reading list, I couldn't not buy it when I saw a copy!

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge and London: Belknap Press, 2005. An important and controversial book which I seem to run into frequently in various threads and blogs, so again something worth reading so I can stay abreast of the debate.

Samuel Hynes. A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture. London: Pimlico, 1992. Another gap in my library filled. As much about the fifteen years after the war as the war itself.

I bought these the other day, about 17000 km away -- except for one which was a gift.

The Battle of Britain: An Air Ministry Account of the Great Days from 8th August -- 31st October 1940. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1941. Thanks, Simon!

Angus Calder. The People's War: Britain 1939-1945. London: Pimlico, 1992 [1969]. A classic which I've not yet read.

Richard Overy. The Air War 1939-1945. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005 [1980]. Likewise, I'm afraid to say! This edition has an essay on the most important updates to the literature since 1980.

Martin Pugh. We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars. London: Vintage Books, 2009. What you'd expect from the title, but also has a whole chapter on 'the romance and the menace of aviation'.

Sonya O. Rose. Which People's War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. One way to tell when a book has become a classic is when other books start alluding to it in their own titles ...

Jonathan Foster. The Death Ray: The Secret Life of Harry Grindell Matthews. Inventive Publishing, 2009. As seen here. Another find in a Welsh museum bookshop -- I should go to Wales more often!

Peter London. U-Boat Hunters: Cornwall's Air War, 1916-19. Truro: Dyllansow Truran, 1999. RNAS airship and aeroplane anti-submarine operations: some success under pretty trying conditions.

Richard Overy. 1939: Countdown to War. London: Allen Lane, 2009. I've now met the author!

Robert Stradling. Your Children Will Be Next: Bombing and Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008. Argues that the memory of Guernica has obscured earlier atrocities, especially the 1936 bombing of Getafe near Madrid. A complete chance find in the shop at the National Museum Cardiff (though it might have been cheaper to order it over the net than fly to Wales to buy it).

Peter Neville. Hitler and Appeasement: The British Attempt to Prevent the Second World War. London and New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006. Takes the pro-appeasement side of the argument. Particularly good on diplomacy and personalities.