20th Century Military Books

Infernal Traffic

Excavation of a Liberated African Graveyard in Rupert’s Valley, St Helena

Andrew Pearson, Ben Jeffs, Annsofie Witkin & Helen MacQuarrie

St Helena Cover image Britain’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807 did not end the traffic of human beings across the Atlantic. Indeed, for many decades to come, hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans continued to be shipped into slavery. From 1840 to 1872 the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena played a pivotal role in Britain’s efforts to suppress the slave trade, and over this time it received over 25,000 ‘liberated Africans’, taken from slave ships by Royal Navy patrols. Conditions aboard the slavers were appalling, and many did not survive the journey. Rupert’s Valley therefore became a graveyard to many thousands of Africans – ‘a valley of dry bones’ in the words of a visiting missionary.

War Art

Murals and graffiti – military life, power and subversion

by Wayne Cocroft, Danielle Devlin, John Schofield and Roger JC Thomas

War art cover This book presents in accessible and visual form the diversity and significance of modern military wall art, largely in Britain, but set within its wider geographical and historical context.

Beaches, Fields, Streets, and Hills

The anti-invasion landscapes of England, 1940

by William Foot with a foreword by Professor Richard Holmes

RR144 Beaches This book presents the results of a two-year project funded by English Heritage to examine the 1940/41 anti-invasion landscapes of England.

20th Century Defences in Britain

An introductory guide

Handbook of the Defence of Britain Project (Revised edition)

edited by B Lowry

C20th Defences cover During the First and Second World Wars, Britain’s landscape was transformed by a wide variety of military constructions – pill boxes, anti-tank obstacles, coastal batteries, bombing decoys, radar stations, airfield, and many more.

Modern Military Matters

Studying and managing the twentieth-century defence heritage in Britain: a discussion document

by John Schofield

MMM Cover This book provides a concise statement of the state of knowledge and future research priorities relating to twentieth-century military remains in Britain – an emerging area of intense archaeological investigation.