Bantam books A Regimental Affair Mallinson Allan

India 1819: Matthew Hervey is charged with raising a new troop, and organising transport for India - for he, his men and their horses are to set sail with immediate effect • What Hervey and his soldiers cannot know is that in India they will face a trial for which they are woefully under prepared • A large number of Burmese war-boats are assembled near Chittagong, and the only way to thwart their advance involves a hazardous march through the jungle • Soon Hervey and his troop are in the midst of hot and bloody action once again • A Call To Arms is the fourth book in Allan Mallinson's Matthew Hervey series. His adventures continue in The Sabre's Edge. Have you read his previous adventures A Close Run Thing, The Nizam's Daughters and A Regimental Affair?

At the bloody siege of Badajoz, Matthew Hervey must overthrow the French - or die in the attempt • Allan Mallinson brings us another compelling and deeply atmospheric adventure featuring Matthew Hervey. If you like Patrick O'Brian, Bernard Cornwell and CS Forester, you will love this!

‘War is too important to be left to the generals’ snapped future French prime minister Georges Clemenceau on learning of yet another bloody and futile offensive on the Western Front • One of the great questions in the ongoing discussions and debate about the First World War is why did winning take so long and exact so appalling a human cost? After all this was a fight that, we were told, would be over by Christmas • Now, in his major new history, Allan Mallinson, former professional soldier and author of the acclaimed 1914: Fight the Good Fight, provides answers that are disturbing as well as controversial, and have a contemporary resonance. He disputes the growing consensus among historians that British generals were not to blame for the losses and setbacks in the ‘war to end all wars’ – that, given the magnitude of their task, they did as well anyone could have

Edgehill, 1642: Surveying the disastrous scene in the aftermath of the first battle of the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell realizes that war can no longer be made in the old, feudal way: there has to be system and discipline, and therefore - eventually - a standing professional army • From the 'New Model Army' of Cromwell's distant vision, former soldier Allan Mallinson shows us the people and events that have shaped the army we know today. How Marlborough's momentous victory at Blenheim is linked to Wellington's at Waterloo; how the desperate fight at Rorke's Drift in 1879 underpinned the heroism of the airborne forces at Arnhem in 1944; and why Montgomery's momentous victory at El Alamein mattered long after the Second World War was over

Waterloo 1815. The war against Napoleon Bonaparte is raging to its bloody end at Waterloo • A young officer - Cornet Matthew Hervey - going about his duty suddenly finds himself at the crux of events • The decisions he has to make - both military and romantic - will change the course of his life, and possible have far reaching political consequences • A Close Run Thing is the first book in Allan Mallinson's Matthew Hervey series

One of our most distinguished military historians tells the story of six defining battles • Every battle is different. Each takes place in a different context - the war, the campaign, the weapons. However, battles across the centuries, whether fought with sticks and stones or advanced technology, have much in common. Fighting is, after all, an intensely human affair; human nature doesn't change. So why were battles fought as they were? What gave them their shape? Why did they go as they did: victory for one side, defeat for the other? • In exploring six significant feats of arms - the war and campaign in which they each occurred, and the factors that determined their precise form and course - The Shape of Battle answers these fundamental questions about the waging of war

Welcome to Stanhope - a safe neighbourhood. A place for families • William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter Avery unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper • Hours later, Avery's family declares her missing • Suddenly Stanhope doesn't feel so safe. And William isn't the only one on his street who's hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbours become increasingly unhinged • Who took Avery Wooler? • Nothing will prepare you for the truth

Following the 6th Light Dragoons' successful campaign in the state of Coorg and the deposition of its deranged Rajah, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey is looking forward to a few months' respite for his regiment, for himself and his family. Indeed, with his reputation restored, he's rarely felt so content. Alas, such tranquillity is not to last • India's governor-general believes Hervey is just the man to lead a force against the Thuggee and Dacoity gangs whose increasingly vicious attacks threaten not only the stability of a number of friendly princely states but also, of course, the East India Company's interests in the sub-continent • And so Hervey reluctantly leads the Sixth into the field once more. It's a mission that will prove infinitely more complex, brutal and bloody than anyone predicted

January 1830, and one of the hardest winters in memory • The prime minister, the Iron Duke, is resisting growing calls for parliamentary reform, provoking scenes of violent unrest in the countryside • Against this inflammable backdrop Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey, recently returned from an assignment in the Balkans, takes command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. His fears that things might be a little dull are quickly dispelled by the everyday business of vexatious officers, NCOs promotions and incendiarists on the doorstep of the King himself • But it's when the Sixth are sent to Brussels for the fifteenth anniversary celebrations of the battle of Waterloo and find themselves caught up in the Belgian uprising against Dutch rule that the excitement really starts

1828: Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons is urgently summoned to the Cape Colony when he learns that the Zulu warrior King Shaka is about to wage war • Soon Hervey, his old friend Eyre Somervile and their escort of dragoons and mounted rifles are riding north. When they arrive at Shaka's kraal, it quickly becomes apparent that he has slaughtered thousands of his subjects - warriors and women alike • When Shaka is killed by his own people, and the region plunged into civil war, Hervey and his men find themselves in the midst of terrible danger • Yet worse is to come. Separated from his troop, Hervey must lead Shaka's queen across a hostile land where sanctuary has never seemed further away

1827: Britain and the Mediterranean • Captain Sir Laughton Peto, recently engaged to Matthew Hervey's sister, is sailing his mighty line-of-battle ship towards Navarino Bay, and war with the Turks • Six months on, and Matthew Hervey is in London recovering from another bout of malaria and the wound from his battle with the Zulu. All is set for his marriage to the eminently suitable Lady Lankester, and his return to active duty at the Cape • But trouble lies ahead as familial commitments clash with affairs of the heart and Hervey finds himself embroiled in a military inquiry that could result in public humiliation. As the cataclysmic battle of Navarino Bay looms ever closer for Peto and his crew, Hervey faces a crisis that could change both his life and his military career...ban

We remember months, because months have names, because they are linked to the seasons, and because they have their own character. Looking at the First World War month by month reveals its complexity while preserving a sense of time • From the opening shots to the signing of the armistice, the First World War lasted almost 52 months. It was fought on land, sea and in the air. It became industrial, and unrestricted: poison gas, aerial bombing of cities, and the sinking without warning of merchantmen and passenger ships by submarines • Casualties, military and civilian, probably exceeded 40 million. Four empires collapsed during the course of the war – the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman • The First World War is almost impossible to comprehend