Adam Rolland was born in Edinburgh in 1841 but emigrated to Otago with his parents and siblings on the Alpine in 1859. He documented the journey and this interest and skill with drawing and watercolour continued through his life, and even provided employment. This book focuses on a group of watercolours that remained in the family until they were donated to the Hocken Library in Dunedin in 2019. These images of the journey and Adam's life in Central Otago on a pastoral station have been put into context by the family story and other images from archives and museums

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Pages: 138

Dimensions: 242 x 246 x 15 mm

Publication Date: 02-02-2023

From training camps in the Colorado Rockies to clandestine operations in the Himalayas, this book introduces readers to one of the CIA's most remote covert campaigns of the Cold War. This is the story of how the US government - primarily through the CIA and often in cooperation with India - came to harness, nurture, and encourage Tibetan defiance in one of the most extreme covert campaigns of the Cold War. In particular, it details an important chapter in the CIA's paramilitary history. In Tibet, new kinds of equipment - aircraft and parachutes, for example - were combat-tested under the most extreme conditions imaginable. New communications techniques were tried and perfected. In many cases, these lessons learned would be applied to other Cold War battlefields like Vietnam, Laos, and elsewhere. Tibet, therefore, became a vital proving ground for CIA case officers and their spycraft. AUTHOR: Kenneth Conboy was South East Asian policy analyst and deputy director of the Asian Studies Centre in Washington D.C., 1986-1992. Since then he has held roles in risk management companies in Indonesia, and he currently serves as Risk Management Advisory Country Manager in Indonesia. He has written a number of books about war in Asia, as well as several articles. 45 b/w photos, 18 colour photos, 3 colour profiles, 3 maps

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Pages: 82

Dimensions: 210 x 300 mm

Publication Date: 18-11-2022

The Darkest Hour presents the Imperial Japanese Navy offensive in the Indian Ocean area in March-April 1942, the main goal of which was to destroy the Royal Navy in the Far East and achieve domination on the western flank of the Pacific War on the eve of the Battle of Midway. The bold operation by two Japanese task forces (Kido Butai and Malay Force) in the Indian Ocean would only be possible with the fall of Singapore in February and the Dutch East Indies in early March 1942. From the strategic point of view, the Japanese offensive in the Indian Ocean was the only moment in the Second World War when the Axis forces could coordinate their efforts to severely threaten the position of the British Empire in the crucial Middle Eastern and Indian theaters. Volume 2 of The Darkest Hour describes the movements of the invincible Kido Butai, consisting of five aircraft carriers and their escorts, that expected to crush the British bases on Ceylon and once and forever destroy the main core of the Eastern Fleet. The chaos provoked by the Kido Butai would then become a great opportunity for the Malay Force to cut off the British shipping routes in the western part of the Bay of Bengal. The Darkest Hour is the first systematic attempt to describe this less-well known part of the Pacific War by researching both British and Japanese archive documents and other sources published in many countries, including the United Kingdom, Japan, and India. The second volume examines the Japanese aerial assault upon the British bases on Ceylon, and the attacks against the carrier HMS Hermes, cruisers MS Cornwall and Devonshire, and the destroyer HMAS Vampire. The Darkest Hour Volume 2 includes extensive tables detailing the composition of the Japanese air attacks and is illustrated with photographs and with color artworks of the ships and aircraft involved.

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Pages: 80

Dimensions: 210 x 300 mm

Publication Date: 25-08-2022

he book addresses the important global role of the Indian Army during the First World War. It is an academic reassessment of the army by both established and early career scholars of the Indian Army, as well as naval historians. It looks at the historiography of the army - taking into account the recent work on the army (particularly on the Western Front in 1914-1915). The edited volume covers the traditional areas of the Indian Army on the Western Front, in Palestine, Mesopotamia and the defense of the Suez Canal; however, there are also chapters on combined operations; Indian prisoners of war in Germany and Turkey; the expansion of the officer corps; and the Sikh experience, as well as the mobilization of the equine army at the beginning of the war and the demobilization of the army in the period from 1918 until 1923. Three additional chapters are related to the theme, such as the role of the Royal Indian Marine; the Territorial Army in India; and Churchill's portrayal of the Indian Army during the Gallipoli campaign in his account The World Crisis.

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Pages: 314

Dimensions: 156 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 01-12-2022

This book recounts in great detail the three bloody years which led up to the Downing Street declaration. It was a time of hope, punctuated by appalling acts of savagery by Republicans and Loyalists alike. The Frizzell's bombing, the Greysteel massacre, the machine-gun attacks on several Catholic-frequented betting shops are but a few of the outrages carried out by bloodthirsty and undoubtedly evil paramilitaries. The author refuses to keep quiet as Sinn Fein and its apologists in the British Labour Party attempt to re-write the history of the troubles.

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Pages: 358

Dimensions: 156 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 01-12-2022

This book offers a complete guide to the organisation and order-of-battle of British & Commonwealth armies during the years 1939 to 1943. The five chapters cover all main theatres of war - Europe incl. the Home Front; North Africa; East & West Africa, and the Middle East; the Mediterranean; the Pacific & Far East. T.o.E.'s (Tables of Organisation & Equipment) are given for all main and many minor types of formations in each theatre - from armored brigades and divisions in North Africa, to Egyptian home defense forces 1939-42, British Force 121 in Magadagascar 1942, and Indian infantry units in Iraq and Persia during 1940-41. Some of the formations covered include ARMOURED FORMATIONS - armoured divisions, tank brigades, independent armoured units INFANTRY FORMATIONS - infantry divisions, territorial/lines-of-communication divisions, infantry brigades, motorised brigades OTHER FORMATIONS - airborne divisions, anti-aircraft divisions, cavalry divisions, parachute brigades, cavalry brigades, home defence forces including the Home Guard and Australian militia, significant garrisons (including Crete, Singapore and Hong Kong), corps and army support elements, ad hoc formations (e.g. Habforce, Force 121), comprehensive coverage of special forces.

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Pages: 96

Dimensions: 203 x 292 mm

Publication Date: 15-07-2008

Te Awa Atua is a ground-breaking study of menstruation in pre-colonial Maori society. Many early ethnographic accounts of menstrual rites were distorted beyond recognition by the colonial lens of their authors, yet their misinterpretations continue to be accepted as authoritative. This book is a challenge to that authority. By examining stories about menstruation located in Maori cosmologies, tribal histories, oral literatures, ceremonies and rites, Ngahuia Murphy argues that menstruation was seen as a medium of whakapapa (genealogy) that connected Maori women to their pantheon of atua (deities). Ancient rites, recorded in tribal songs and chants, reveal that menstrual blood was used for psychic and spiritual protection. These examples unveil striking indigenous constructs of womanhood that radically challenge notions of female inferiority and menstrual pollution.

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Pages: 180

Dimensions: 160 x 225 mm

A sport based on one animal sitting on top of another and trying (usually) to be the first pair to reach a wooden stick is a curiosity in itself. So it's no surprise that horseracing is full of curiosities. The curiosities in this collection have been chosen to arouse interest. They are stories of those curious creatures - people, and of horses. The curiosities are arranged in themes so that the reader can dip in and out, as the mood takes them. The collection should leave them with a benevolent view of an intriguing sport, if they didn't already have one. Owners, jockeys, the horses, racecourses, officials, prizes, trainers and staff, racing journalists, betting, bookmakers, punters, skulduggery - one of Britain's best loved racing journalists David Ashforth has found the stories to capture the readers attention on all these topics and more.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 256

Dimensions: 156 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 08-09-2022

San Carlos to Stanley is the first history of 40 Commando in the Falklands and dispels the belief that their only role was to look after the beachhead during this conflict. Commadore Clapp requested the men of 40 Commando remain at San Carlos as he knew he could trust them to defend his vital anchorage against Argentine counterattack from West Falkland, without which there could be no advance. Initially tasked to fly to the Falklands as tension heightened prior to the Argentine invasion, A Company, 40 Commando eventually left the UK onboard HMS Hermes ahead of the main task force. After the Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad tragedy, A and C Companies, 40 Commando replaced the Welsh Guards' losses and moved forward with that battalion to be the reserve force for the Scots Guards' attack on Mount Tumbledown and the 1/7 Gurkhas attack on Mount William. Men of 40 Commando were involved in the only daylight helicopter assault of the Falklands conflict, against an Argentine position on Sapper Hill, and if the Argentines had not surrendered and all British movements stopped, C Company followed by A Company would have been first to reach Stanley. San Carlos to Stanley has many personal accounts from officers and men of 40 Commando including the Ajax Bay and San Carlos bombing which resulted in numerous casualties including two fatalities.

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Pages: 170

Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm

Publication Date: 01-05-2022

In 1941 aged six David Gunn was subjected to Hitler’s Blitz of Plymouth. Unlike some 1,200 who were killed, he and his mother escaped to live on a farm in the peaceful Cotswold hills where he learned to milk cows and ride horses. David joined the Royal Navy, the fourth generation of his family to do so, at the age of 13. At the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth there was a cold bath on waking up and compulsory boxing – then to an even more disciplined training cruiser in the tropics and Arctic Circle. Now a midshipman he travelled on the HMT Empire Windrush to the Indian Ocean to join a cruiser which sailed for the Maldives to oversee the transformation from sultanate to republic. Returning home there were rough seas in the Cold War, rugby with the Wasps and modern pentathlon to Olympic standard. Training as a Fleet Air Arm fighter pilot was followed by operational flying in the Mediterranean. Spies appeared more than once. Vera Lynn, Clement Freud, Rupert Murdoch and Barbara Cartland all entered his life. A Lieutenant Commander on a Friday night, David became a television presenter the following Monday. This is his story …

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Pages: 164

Dimensions: 156 x 234 mm

Publication Date: 31-05-2022