A Field Officer's Notebook by Dan Davin

$29.95 NZD

Category: Second World War | Reading Level: New

Dan Davin, best known for his prose fiction, memoirs, and work in academic publishing, also wrote poetry. Not that he wrote poetry throughout his life; rather, it was almost exclusively written in three discrete periods: during the mid-to-late thirties while at university in New Zealand and England; dur ing the Second World War while on service in Greece, North Africa, and Italy; and after his retirement from the Clarendon Press in Oxford and in nearby Dorchester in the mid-eighties. A FIELD OFFICER'S NOTEBOOK makes this body of work available to general readers for the first time. Although all Davin's poems deserve to be read, those he wrote during his time as an intelligence officer with the Second New Zealand Division are revelatory and ought to be given their due as much by students of literature as by those of modern warfare. Quite unlike anything in New Zealand literature--exacting yet generous, angry but tender, almost sui generis--they speak strangely of even stranger things that defined a generation. Davin's poems speak unguardedly and disarmingly about one man's life . . . in a voice that haunts long after it has been heard.' --from the introduction by Robert McLean. ...Show more

From Cairo to Cassino: A Memoir of Paddy Costello by Dan Davin

$25.00 NZD

Category: Second World War | Reading Level: new

In From Cairo to Cassino Dan Davin writes of the wartime days of his friendship with the extraordinary Paddy Costello. Paddy Costello, along with John Mulgan, Geoffrey Cox, Ian Milner, James Bertram, and Dan Davin, was one of a cast of young scholars who made seemingly peripheral yet lasting contributio ns to the New Zealand post-war cultural landscape. But Costello, despite his great many gifts, never quite found his place in the world and he remains an elusive and contradictory figure, someone whose reputation rests on what he could have done rather than on what he did. Yet he continues to fascinate by his very elusiveness. vPaddy Costello was also the best friend of Dan Davin: expatriate publisher, editor, novelist, short-story writer, poet, raconteur, and not least of all an indefatigably generous host and friend to many New Zealand writers. From Cairo to Cassino recounts the beginnings and the deepening of their friendship as they talked, tippled and fought their way through North Africa and Italy. Spanning Davins embarkation with 2 New Zealand Division at Alexandria, as it headed towards its mauling in Greece and on Crete, through to the day of the bombing of Monte Cassino, this book is many things: gentle and impassioned, candid and ironical, recondite and visceral. It is also often very funny. One of Davins last significant works and perhaps the one in which he made his deepest personal investment, From Cairo to Cassino confirms that he was one of our finest memoirists, as he lovingly brings Costello back to life in all his sound and fury. A significant addition to New Zealands literature of the Second World War, this is a special book that deserves to be read and reread. While it has been quoted from in biographies of Davin and Costello, this is the first publication of the full text. ...Show more

Behind Enemy Lines : Kiwi Freedom Fighters in WWII by Matthew Wright

$40.00 NZD

Category: Second World War | Reading Level: very good

'The cloak and dagger, secretive, mercurial, exceedingly hazardous life behind enemy lines . . . ' (Allan Yeoman) Between 1941 and 1945 a fair number of young Kiwi combatants found themselves loose behind enemy lines in occupied southern Europe - mostly Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy. Most were escaped pr isoners of war, trying to reach friendly territory. A few brave souls such as John Mulgan and Dudley Perkins took even riskier routes, actually landing in occupied territory to bolster the resistance and carry the fight to the enemy. When need arose, the escapees fought, often as members of partisan bands. 'We decided that if it was too late to get across to Turkey or Palestine the alternative was to kick up a bit of a bloody shindig in southern Greece,' Bill Griffiths recalled of his experiences. Resourceful and determined Kiwis helped make life a headache for German and Italian occupying forces. This book tells of many extraordinary feats of heroism and survival. We have only to look at Bill Griffiths' adventures, scudding into Piraeus harbour amidst a storm, right under the noses of the Nazis; or at the way Frank Gardner took the war into his own hands, dynamiting German trains with or without the help of the partisans, to realise just how remarkable, determined and capable these young New Zealanders really were. ...Show more

Shooting Gallery by John C. Hunter

$8.00 NZD

Category: Second World War | Reading Level: very good

Nazi Connection by F.W. Winterbotham

$5.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

Citizen Soldiers by Stephen E. Ambrose

$20.00 NZD

$39.95 (49% off)

Category: Second World War

In this riveting account, historian Stephen Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war ex perience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it. ...Show more

Chaos of the Night: Women's Poetry and Verse of the Second World War by Catherine W. Reilly

$5.00 NZD

$15.99 (68% off)

Category: Second World War

6 June 1944 D-Day Dawn Of Heroes

$5.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

The Long Green Tunnel

$20.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

War Pictures By British Artists

$15.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

The Russian War Machine, 1917-1945 by Sydney Louis Mayer

$15.00 NZD

Category: Second World War

Years of sorrow:years of shame

$5.00 NZD

Category: Second World War