Max Hastings

The RAF's night offensive against Germany — 55,000 aircrew dead, German cities in ashes, and the question of what it achieved.

A reappraisal of the Normandy campaign arguing that German soldiers were man-for-man superior to their Allied.

The western Allies' grinding advance into Germany from the Rhine to the Elbe.

The brutal final year of the Pacific War, from the Philippines to the atomic bombings.

A global history of the war focused on the experience of ordinary people — soldiers and civilians — caught in.