Military institutions, memorials – The Bell Bookshop

SAS

Emma — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Des Powell left school with no qualifications and little in the way of formal education. At nineteen he signed up to join the Parachute Regiment.

Famously, the Paras is home to the UK military’s second-toughest training regime after the SAS. Des Powell knows all about both. In fact, Des knows SAS selection better than anyone because he’s done it twice. In SAS: Trial by Fire he tells the story of those gruelling tests: how Para training turned him into a soldier but, more crucially, how the SAS process turned him into a member of the elite.

Des describes exactly what it takes to be an elite special forces operator. From raw recruit to trained fighting machine – including the heart-breaking moment he was forced to withdraw, only to begin the process again – Des shares the details of his personal journey, itself a tale of prevailing against almost overwhelming odd. He teaches us valuable life skills by taking us deep into the training regime itself: fitness, navigation, endurance, weapons and combat training, survival techniques in hostile climates, the terrifying jungle phase, the dark arts of escape and evasion, the secret of surviving interrogation.

No one’s lifted the lid on what it takes to join the SAS and become the best of the best. Until now.

Praise for Bravo Three Zero

‘A must read. Honesty, integrity and real experience that puts you in the thick of the action.’ Billy Billingham

‘The story that needed to be told’ Jason Fox

‘The attention to detail is unbelievable’ Tim Lovejoy

‘Thrilling’ Express

Those must be the guards

Emma — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The story of the British Army’s Household Division from 1969 to 2023. It is the biography of a family of three generations of soldiers who have served Crown and Country during a period of significant social and geostrategic change.The story of the British Army’s Household Division from 1969 to 2023 is one of three generations of soldiers who have served Crown and Country during a period of significant social and geostrategic change. It is the story of a family of seven regiments that symbolise the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Septem juncta in uno: The Life Guards, The Blues and Royals, Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards. The Guards established an ascendancy in the Peninsular War and at the Battle of Waterloo, and have never truly faltered since. They have managed this by changing when change was needed. Over the last 50 years, the Household Division has been at the centre of almost every major operation conducted by the British Army: Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, the Household Division is a national institution, admired by the public through its mastery of ceremonial and pageantry, and the magnificent hour that is Trooping the Colour. The professionalism and self-discipline of the individual Guardsmen and Troopers are what ensures both their exemplary performance on operations and their high standards of state ceremonial and public duties. Those Must Be The Guards illustrates both roles through the experiences of those who have served in the Household Division over the past half-century.

Behind Enemy Lines

Emma — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

With three Military Crosses, three Croix de guerre, a Légion d’honneur and a papal knighthood for his heroics during the Second World War, Sir Tommy Macpherson is the most decorated living soldier of the British Army.

Yet for 65 years the Highlander’s story has remained untold. Few know how, aged 21, he persuaded 23,000 SS soldiers of the feared Das Reich tank column to surrender, or how Tommy almost single-handedly stopped Tito’s Yugoslavia annexing the whole of north-east Italy. Twice captured, he escaped both times, marching through hundreds of miles of German-held territory to get home.

Still a schoolboy when war broke out, Tommy quickly matured into a legendary commando, and his remarkable story features a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle.