James Holland Popular Books
James Holland Biography & Facts
James Holland (born 27 June 1970) is an English historian, author and broadcaster, who specialises in the history of the Second World War. Holland has written novels and non-fiction history books focusing on the Second World War, and presented documentaries for television and radio. He is the co-founder and co-chair of the annual Chalke Valley History Festival, and co-hosts the We Have Ways Of Making You Talk podcast with Al Murray. Early life and education Holland was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire. He was educated at Chafyn Grove School, Salisbury, and King's School, Bruton, and in 1992 attained a BA degree in history from St Chad's College, Durham. His elder brother Tom Holland is a writer and historian. Career Holland has written both novels and non-fiction history books focusing on the Second World War, and has presented documentary programming about WWII for television and radio. He is the co-founder, co-chair and programme director of the annual Chalke Valley History Festival, which is the largest festival dedicated entirely to history in the UK. Holland and Al Murray are the hosts of the We Have Ways Of Making You Talk podcast. Non-fiction books Holland's first historical account of World War II was published in 2003. Fortress Malta – An Island Under Siege, 1940–1943 was favourably reviewed by Nicholas Roe for The Guardian: "Fortress Malta succeeds brilliantly in showing war's human position. James Holland deftly interweaves the personal histories of pilots, soldiers, submariners, sailors, nurses, office clerks and other civilians. All are brought compellingly to life in a brisk, tightly constructed narrative that has the impetus of first-hand experience." In 2006, Holland published a study of a selection of young men who reached adulthood during World War II. Twenty-One: Coming of Age in the Second World War (retitled Heroes: The Greatest Generation and the Second World War for the 2007 paperback release) was reviewed by Max Hastings in The Telegraph: "Holland has already achieved a reputation as a fine and perceptive recorder of human experience. Here, he exploits his skills to describe what it is like for very young people to find themselves performing tasks and sometimes assuming responsibilities greater than anything they could have known at 21 in peacetime life." His 2008 book Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944–1945 was reviewed by Publishers Weekly, which said: "This is popular history at its very best: exhaustively researched, compellingly written and authoritative". Historian Saul David, writing in The Telegraph, praised Holland's book The Battle of Britain: Five Months that Changed History, May – October 1940 (2010): "Holland prefers his history to be about people, and his dazzling cast of characters includes civilians and servicemen, men and women, young and old. It may take him more than 300 pages to get to the Battle of Britain proper, yet the pace never flags". Aviation History magazine called his 2013 history, Dam Busters: The True Story of the Inventors and Airmen Who Led the Devastating Raid to Smash the German Dams in 1943 "painstakingly researched and splendidly told" and said that it was "the definitive book on the subject, deserving a place in the library of any student of the famous raid". In 2015, The Guardian reviewed the first volume in Holland's planned trilogy, The War in the West, Volume I: Germany Ascendant 1939–1941, with writer Alexander Larman calling it "impeccably researched and superbly written" and saying "Holland’s fascinating saga offers a mixture of captivating new research and well-considered revisionism. The next two volumes should be unmissable." The second volume, The War in the West:The Allies Strike Back, 1941–1943, was published in 2017 and was called by Kirkus Reviews "an expert, anecdote-filled, thoroughly entertaining if heavily British-oriented history of the war’s middle years". His 2019 book Normandy '44: D-Day and the Battle for France was called "far from the first but among the better histories of the Allied invasion of Europe" by Kirkus Reviews and "an excellent and engrossing new look at the Normandy invasion" by Publishers Weekly. Holland writes entries in the Ladybird Expert Series of books for children, with each focused on a particular battle or aspect of World War II. He has said that he plans to write a total of twelve books for the series. He is an occasional contributor to Britain at War magazine. Novels Holland's first novel, The Burning Blue (2004), is about a young fighter pilot who is hiding a family secret. It takes place in the months leading up to and after the start of World War II. Nigel Jones wrote the Guardian review of it and said "[Holland] has joined the few who can bring history to life." His first novel in a series featuring the exploits of Sgt. Jack Tanner, a soldier in the fictitious WWII unit The King's Own Yorkshire Rangers, was published in 2008. The Odin Mission was favorably reviewed by the Telegraph's Roger Perkins, who called it "a meaty, all-action yarn". As of 2019, a total of five Jack Tanner books have been published. Holland has written two young adult novels about teenage soldiers taking part in famous World War II battles: Duty Calls: Dunkirk (2011) and Duty Calls: Battle of Britain (2012). Documentaries Holland has written and presented documentaries on World War II for BBC Two. Battle of Britain: The Real Story (2010) received a Break-through Talent nomination from the BAFTA TV Craft Awards for its producer/director Aaron Young. Dam Busters: The Race to Smash the German Dams aired in 2011, The Battle for Malta in 2013 and Normandy '44: The Battle Beyond D-Day in 2014. With his two-part BBC Two documentary Cold War, Hot Jets (2013), he took a rare departure from World War II to focus on the postwar era and the aeronautics race. Reviewing it for the Guardian, Sam Wollaston called it a "rip-roaring documentary." Starting in 2015, Holland filmed multiple episodes of the PBS documentary series Pritzker Military Presents, produced by the Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Chicago. Two of the episodes were based upon the first two volumes of his War in the West book trilogy: The Rise of Germany, 1939 – 1941 and The Allies Strike Back, 1941–1943, and a third was based upon his 2018 book Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War II. He appeared on an episode of the National Geographic Channel's Nazi Megastructures, titled 'Hitler's Killer Subs', in 2016. In 2018, he made a documentary for Dan Snow's on-demand history channel, HistoryHit TV. In Imphal & Kohima: Britain's Greatest Battle, he argued that the simultaneous 1944 Battle of Imphal and Battle of Kohima, in which Allied forces drove back the Japanese attempt to invade India, was Britain's greatest military battle of all time. In 2019, he looked at the use of amphetamines in World War II and how it unleashed the first pharmacological arms race in an episode of the PBS history series Secret.... Discover the James Holland popular books. Find the top 100 most popular James Holland books.
Best Seller James Holland Books of 2024
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Surface With Daring
Douglas ReemanHiding, lying in wait on the sea bed, is EX16.Though one of the most important ships in the Royal Navy, she's not much to look at; she's only 54 feet long, with no defensive armame...
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The Domesday Quest
Michael WoodIn 1086, Domesday Book, perhaps the most remarkable historical document in existence, was compiled. This tremendous story of England and its people was made at the behest of the No...
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Lay Down My Sword and Shield
James Lee BurkeVintage James Lee Burke: The first novel introducing the memorable Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, coming of age against the backdrop of the civil rights era in a sultry border to...
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Forgotten Voices Of The Great War
Max ArthurIn 1960, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous and important task. A team of academics, archivists and volunteers set about tracing WWI veterans and interviewing them at length...
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Shroud for a Nightingale
P. D. JamesHailed as “mystery at its best” by The New York Times, Shroud for a Nightingale is the fourth book in bestselling author P.D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh mystery series.The young women ...
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Tales of Belkin and Other Prose Writings
Alexander Pushkin & Ronald WilksAlexander Pushkin was Russia's first true literary genius. Best known for his poetry, he also wrote sparkling prose that revealed his national culture with elegance and understated...
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Sabre Squadron
Cameron SpenceWith the outbreak of Gulf War hostilities a unit from 22 SAS slipped quietly over the border and into the enemy's backyard. It would be six weeks before any of the patrol again rea...
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Last Post
Max ArthurThe 'Forgotten Voices' of the First World War speak for the final time.LAST POST is very consciously the last word from the handful of First World War survivors who were left alive...
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Dead Men Talking
Nicholas DaviesFollowing the revelations of the secret conspiracy between British Military Intelligence and the gunmen of the Ulster Defence Association in TenThirtyThree, Nicholas Davies now dra...
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A Short History of the World
H.G. Wells & Michael SherborneSpanning the origins of the Earth to the outcome of the First World War, this is a brilliantly compelling account of the evolution of life and the development of the human race. Al...
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Behind Enemy Lines
Richard Bath & Sir Tommy MacphersonWith 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 decorate...
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House of the Rising Sun
James Lee BurkeBestselling author James Lee Burke’s “stunning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) masterpiece is the story of a father and son separated by war, circumstance, and a race for the ...
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Guide to Greece
Pausanias & Peter LeviWritten by a Greek traveller in the second century ad for a principally Roman audience, Pausanias' Guide to Greece is a comprehensive, extraordinarily literate and wellinformed gui...
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The Regiment
Michael AsherFrom the bestselling author of The Real Bravo Two Zero comes the definitive history of the world's most elite fighting force the SAS'Breathtaking bravery, astonishing feats of end...
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The Penguin History of Britain
Mark KishlanskyThe sixth of nine volumes in the major Penguin History of Britain series, A Monarchy Transformed narrates the tempestuous political events of the Stuart dynasty. It charts the rei...
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The Black Tower
P. D. JamesJust recovered from a grave illness, Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called to the bedside of an elderly priest. When Dalgliesh arrives, Father Baddeley is dead. Is it merely his own b...
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The Exception
Alan JuddSoon to be a major motion picture starring Academy Award winner Christopher Plummer, Lily James, and Jai Courtney. The Exception (originally published as The Kaiser’s Last Kiss), i...
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Blue Man Falling
Frank BarnardFor fans of Band of Brothers and Masters of the Air, Blue Man Falling brings to life the exhilaration and fear of aerial warfare with astonishing power and narrative skill. Above a...
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Warriors
George R.R. Martin & Gardner DozoisFrom George R. R. Martin's Introduction to Warriors: "People have been telling stories about warriors for as long as they have been telling stories. Since Homer first sang the wrat...
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Innocent Blood
P. D. JamesAdopted as a child into a privileged family, Philippa Palfrey fantasizes that she is the daughter of an aristocrat and a parlor maid. The terrifying truth about her parents and a l...
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Tumult in the Clouds
James GoodsonThe classic memoir by one of America's greatest fighting aces: James GoodsonAngloAmerican James Goodson's war began on Sept 3rd 1939, when the SS Athenia was torpedoed and sank off...
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Having it So Good
Peter HennessyWinner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, Peter Hennessy's Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties captures Britain in an extraordinary decade, emerging from the shadow o...
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The History of the Franks
Gregory Of Tours & Lewis ThorpeWritten following the collapse of Rome's secular control over western Europe, the History of Gregory (c. AD 539594) is a fascinating exploration of the events that shaped sixthcent...
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Military Dispatches
The Duke of WellingtonThe vivid and exciting accounts written from the front line, taking the story of the British war with Napoleon from its desperate beginnings in Portugal to the final triumph at Wat...
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Unnatural Causes
P. D. JamesThe third installment in the classic Adam Dalgliesh mystery series, Unnnatural Causes is another mustread pageturner from bestselling author P.D. James, “the reigning mistress of m...
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Death of an Expert Witness
P. D. JamesIn yet another pageturning installment in the bestselling Adam Dalgliesh mystery series from P.D. James, “the reigning mistress of murder” (Time), the Inspector must investigate th...
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The Complete Poems
William Blake & Alicia OstrikerOne of the great English Romantic poets, William Blake (17571827) was an artist, poet, mystic and visionary. His work ranges from the deceptively simple and lyrical Songs of Innoce...
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Cover Her Face
P. D. JamesThe first in the series of scintillating mysteries to feature cunning Scotland Yard detective, Adam Dalgliesh from P.D. James, the bestselling author hailed by People magazine as “...
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The Age of Alexander
PlutarchPlutarch's parallel biographies of the great men in Greek and Roman history are cornerstones of European literature, drawn on by writers and statesmen since the Renaissance, most n...
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An Imperial Possession
David MattinglyPart of the Penguin History of Britain series, An Imperial Possession is the first major narrative history of Roman Britain for a generation. David Mattingly draws on a wealth of ...
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Britain Against Napoleon
Roger KnightFrom Roger Knight, established by his multiaward winning book The Pursuit of Victory as 'an authority ... none of his rivals can match' (N.A.M. Rodger), Britain Against Napoleon is...
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A Mind to Murder
P. D. JamesThe second book to feature Scotland Yard investigator Adam Dalgliesh, A Mind To Murder is a “superbly satisfying mystery” (Chicago Daily News) from bestselling author P.D. James.On...
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Most Secret War
R.V. JonesReginald Jones was nothing less than a genius. And his appointment to the Intelligence Section of Britain's Air Ministry in 1939 led to some of the most astonishing scientific and ...
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The Makers of Rome
Plutarch & Ian Scott-KilvertThese nine biographies illuminate the careers, personalities and military campaigns of some of Rome's greatest statesmen, whose lives span the earliest days of the Republic to the ...
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An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
P. D. JamesAn Unsuitable Job for a Woman introduces bestselling mystery author P.D. James’s courageous but vulnerable young detective, Cordelia Gray, in a “toprated puzzle of peril that holds...
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The Persian Expedition
Xenophon & Rex WarnerIn The Persian Expedition, Xenophon, a young Athenian noble who sought his destiny abroad, provides an enthralling eyewitness account of the attempt by a Greek mercenary army the ...
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Selected Poems and Letters
Arthur Rimbaud, Jeremy Harding & John SturrockA phenomenonally precicious schoolboy, Rimbaud was still a teenager when he became notorious as Europe's most shocking and exhilarating poet. During his brief 5year reign as the e...
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A Time for Heroes
Frank BarnardWar makes heroes of men, but at what price?Sure to enthral fans of Masters of the Air and Fall of Giants, A Time for Heroes is a magnificent, sweeping, threegeneration historical e...
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Ancient Worlds
Richard MilesAcross the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Nile Delta, aweinspiring, monstrous ruins are scattered across the landscape vast palaces, temples, fortresses, shattered statues...
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Forgotten Voices of the Blitz and the Battle For Britain
Joshua LevineDrawing material from the Imperial War Museum's extensive aural archive, Joshua Levine brings together voices from both sides of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain to give us a un...
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To Lose a Battle
Alistair HorneIn 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne’s narrative shifts...
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Hidden History
Gerry Docherty & James MacGregorThink you know about British history and the causes of the First World War? Think again. This fascinating and gripping study of events at the turn of the Twentieth Century is a rem...
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Floodgate
Alistair MacleanThe tense tale of a deadly terrorist plot set in Holland, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.AMSTERDAM AIRPORT HAS DISAPPEAREDBLACKMAILThe mass of water in its place ...