DAVID KYNASTON: AUSTERITY BRITAIN (Bloomsbury HB) Coursing through Austerity Britain is an astonishing variety of voices - vivid, unselfconscious, and unaware of what the future holds. A Chingford housewife endures the tribulations of rationing; a retired schoolteacher observes during a royal visit how well-fed the Queen looks; a pernickety civil servant in Bristol is oblivious to anyone's troubles but his own. An array of working-class witnesses describe how life in post-war Britain is, with little regard for liberal niceties or the feelings of their 'betters'. Many of these voices will stay with the reader in future volumes, jostling alongside well-known figures like John Arlott (here making his first radio broadcast, still in police uniform), Glenda Jackson (taking the 11+) and Doris Lessing (newly arrived from Africa, struck by the levelling poverty of postwar Britain. David Kynaston weaves a sophisticated narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic and social landscape for the next three decades. Deeply researched, often amusing and always intensely entertaining and readable, the first volume of David Kynaston's ambitious history offers an entirely fresh perspective on Britain during those six momentous years. This ought to be compulsory reading for today's misfits, and particularly the younger adults who walk into jobs with unbelievably high salaries who think they have a God-given right to be rich and  talentless at the same time. People who lived through this period of our all-too-recent history will recognise the awful sacrifices we had to make (I grew up under the cloud of rationing, and reading about what we had to live on, it's a wonder we survived!). People who worship free enterprise and the evil materialism and cunning of the Thatcher years (couldn't resist another dig!) should read this and weep at how their ancestors had to live in the early years following the war. Kynaston has written a scintillating and highly-readable book peppered with quotes from ordinary and famous people. Politicians still alive (Benn, Healey, Churchill, Jackson, Jenkins) crop up with delightful regularity alongside luminaries from the world of entertainment (Coward, Grenfell). A landmark history book that's a welcome addition to a subject all too often couched in the language of Radio 3 and subsequently too academic for the lay reader. This is popular history at its absolute best.

JACK SHELDON: THE GERMAN ARMY AT PASSCHENDAELE (Pen and Sword HB) Even after the passage of almost a century, the name Passchendaele has lost none of its power to shock and dismay. Reeling from the huge losses in earlier battles, the German army was in no shape to absorb the impact of the Battle of Messines and the subsequent bitter attritional struggle. Throughout the fighting on the Somme the German army had always felt that it had the ability to counter Allied thrusts, but following the shock reverses of April and May 1917, much heart searching had led to the urgent introduction of new tactics of flexible defence. When these in turn were found to be wanting, the psychological damage shook the German defenders badly. But, as this book demonstrates, at trench level the individual soldier of the German Army was still capable of fighting extraordinarily hard, despite being outnumbered, outgunned and subjected to relentless, morale-sapping shelling and gas attacks. The German army drew comfort from the realisation that, although it had had to yield ground and had paid a huge price in casualties, its morale was essentially intact and the British were no closer to a breakthrough in Flanders at the end of the battle than they had been many weeks earlier. Most people have heard of the Somme, Ypres, and the other great battles of WW1, but Passchendaele remains, for some, an unknown quantity. This volume, with a fascinating series of maps that reveal eye-witness locations at or during the Battle of Messines, will redress the balance. A series of photographs provides eerie evidence of a small village literally wiped off the face of the Earth and the map of Europe, while Allied forces launched an unstoppable bombardment. Written largely by the men who fought, died and lived through this most harrowing part of the conflict, it focuses on the valour and the determination of the German army to prevent the Allies from making significant headway. Fascinating.

G S BEARD: LIEUTENANT FURY (Random House PB) It is 1793. HMS Amazon is returning from an arduous duty in the Indian Ocean when she encounters a French frigate in the Atlantic. When Amazon left England nearly two years before the countries were not at war but any hopes that the peace still holds are shattered as the Frenchman unexpectedly opens fire - a bloody sea battle ensues resulting in both triumph and personal tragedy for Acting Lieutenant John Fury. A battered Amazon puts into Gibraltar for repairs and there Fury has his promotion confirmed by Vice Admiral Lord Hood, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet. But with promotion comes a transfer away from his home on the Amazon and a new challenge. He will be the fifth lieutenant on the 74 gun man of war Fortitude. Tedious blockading duty on the French Fleet in Toulon seems to be in prospect but then in a remarkable development Toulon and the enemy fleet are surrendered to Hood by French Monarchists. A series of unexpected events sees Fury temporarily transferred away from Fortitude, first to a brig, his first independent command, then to a gun ship and finally to defend a prominent fort ashore as the Republican armies, inspired by a young artillery officer by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, establish a brutal siege of the port. It is soon clear that Britain and her allies are going to be hard pressed to hold onto their prize. But Fury has more to lose than most , in the maelstrom of the siege he has met and fallen in love with a pretty French girl, Sophie Gourrier. Somehow, as the defence crumbles, he must rescue his men and Sophie from the doomed city.

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