Where courage drowned, mateship endured, and survival was never certain.Written by returned Australian soldier Private Edward Lynch, Somme Mud stands as one of the most powerful accounts of the First World War. Drafted in pencil across twenty school exercise books in the late 1920s and preserved against the odds, it is a work born directly from experience.Told through the voice of ‘Nulla’, Lynch’s fictionalised self, the narrative follows seven Australian s...

Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy ... weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories." In 1943 it became known under the c...

In March 1918, with the fear of a one-million-man American army landing in France, the Germans attacked. In response, Australian soldiers were involved in a number of engagements, culminating in the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the saving of Amiens, and Paris, from German occupation.Then came General John Monash's first victory as the Commanding Officer of the newly formed Australian Corps at Hamel. This victory, and the tactics it tested, became crucial to the Allied vi...

Known as The Boy Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Marks, was the youngest battalion commander in the AIF and highly regarded not only as a future military commander, but as a business and community leader.It was a blustery day on the 25th January 1920 at Palm Beach to the north of Sydney and the surf was wild. Two attempts had already been made to save a young woman caught in an undertow and dragged out when a young man; skinny, gangly and frail and known to be ...

Psychiatry Reborn: Biopsychosocial Psychiatry in Modern Medicine is a comprehensive collection of essays by leading experts in the field, and provides a timely reassessment of the biopsychosocial approach in psychiatry. Spanning the sciences and philosophy of psychiatry, the essays offer complementary perspectives on the ever more urgent importance of the biopsychosocial approach to modern medicine. The collection brings together ideas from the series of Loebel Lectures by world leaders in...

'Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one - fire! Down goes the firing switch. At first, nothing. Then from deep down there comes a low rumble, and it as if the world is spliting apart...'On 7th June 1917, nineteen massive mines exploded beneath Messines Ridge near Ypres. The largest man-made explosion in history up until that point shattered the landscape and smashed open the German lines. Ten thousand German soldiers died.Two of the mines...

When Will Davies discovered the manuscript for Somme Mud he knew he had found a lost treasure. Private Lynch's powerful, personal story of his time in the trenches of the Somme has become a classic.In this new book, Will Davies meticulously follows in the footsteps of Lynch and his battalion, the 45th - from their long route marches to lice ridden billets, into the frontline and seeing action at such infamous battles as Messines, Dernancourt, Stormy Trench and Villers Bret...

Beautifully presented young readers’ edition of the bestselling memoir of a young soldier on the First World War’s Western Front.'It's the end of the 1916 winter and the conditions are almost unbelievable. We live in a world of Somme mud. We sleep in it, work in it, fight in it, wade in it and many of us die in it. We see it, feel it, eat it and curse it, but we can't escape it, not even by dying.'Private Edward Lynch was just 18 when he enlisted in the arm...

Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy ... weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories." In 1943 it became known under the c...

Acclaimed historian and best-selling author Antony Beevor vividly brings to life the epic struggles that took place in Second World War Crete - reissued with a new introduction.'The best book we have got on Crete' ObserverThe Germans expected their airborne attack on Crete in 1941 - a unique event in the history of warfare - to be a textbook victory based on tactical surprise. They had no idea that the British, using Ultra intercep...

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLEROn 19 July 1916, 7000 Australian soldiers - in the first major action of the AIF on the Western Front - attacked entrenched German positions at Fromelles in northern France. By the next day, there were over 5500 casualties, including nearly 2000 dead - a bloodbath that the Australian War Memorial describes as 'the worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history.Just days later, three Australian Divisions attacked German positions at nearby Pozières, an...

It’s early 1918, and after four brutal years, the fate of the Great War hangs in the balance.On the one hand, the fact that Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks have seized power in Russia – immediately suing for peace with Germany – means that no fewer than one million of the Kaiser’s soldiers can now be transferred from there to the Western Front.On the other, now that America has entered the war, it means that two million American soldiers are also on their way, to tip the ...