Top Ten Books from the Oxford Battle Series

Gallipoli by Jenny MacLeod

Oxford University Press has a series that covers classic battles from Ancient Greece to World War II. Each of these books discusses not only the battles themselves but how they were commemorated and their long term impact on history. The books try to understand not just how the battle took place, but why they became so important.

Anne Curry. Agincourt (Oxford Univesity Press, 2015) Why is Agincourt one the best known and celebrated battles in history? What made it remarkable? Like many of the battles in the series, the legend of Agincourt has overshadowed the battle itself. One of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare's plays (Saint Crispin's Day Speech) is Henry V's speech inspiring his soldiers before Agincourt.

Anne Curry first sets the scene, illuminating how and why the battle was fought, as well as its significance in the wider history of the Hundred Years War. She then takes the Agincourt story through the centuries from 1415 to 2015, from the immediate, and sometimes surprising, responses to it on both sides of the Channel, through its reinvention by Shakespeare in King Henry V (1599), and the enduring influence of both the play and the film versions of it, especially the patriotic Laurence Olivier version of 1944, at the time of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

Simon Ball. Alamein (Oxford Univesity Press, 2015)

Murray Pittock. Culloden (Oxford Univesity Press, 2015)

Jenny MacLeod. Gallipoli (Oxford Univesity Press, 2015)

John France. Hattin (Oxford Univesity Press, 2015)

Peter H. Wilson. Lutzen (Oxford Univesity Press, 2015)

Ian F. W. Beckett. Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana (Oxford Univesity Press, 2015)

Chris Carey. Thermopylae (Oxford Univesity Press, 2015)

Alan Forrest. Waterloo(Oxford University Press, )

Mark Connelly and Stefan Goebel. Ypres (Oxford Univesity Press, )