{"title":"Rosie Serdiville","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"ode-to-bully-beef-book-rosie-serdiville-9780752491899","title":"Ode to Bully Beef","description":"The Second World War (1939–45) was not greeted with the same lavish outpouring of patriotic fervour that had attended August 1914. Any rags of glory had long since been drowned in the mud of Flanders. The Great War had been heralded as ‘the war to end all wars’; veterans were promised ‘a land fit for heroes’. Both of these vain boasts soon began to sound hollow as depression, unemployment, poverty and a rash of new wars followed. The sons and daughters of those who had embarked upon their own patriotic Calvary did so again in an altogether more sombre spirit. One significant difference between the two conflicts is that, whilst both were industrial wars, the Second World War was far nearer the concept of total war. The growth of strategic air power, in its infancy in 1918, had by 1939 become a reality. In this war, even more widespread and terrible than the last, there were to be no civilians. Death sought new victims everywhere; British citizens were now in the front line, there was to be no respite, no hiding place. This is the poetry and prose of those who were there, ordinary people caught in the terrible maelstrom of mass conflict on a scale hitherto unimagined; this is their testimony.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49585973723409,"sku":"GOR006589594","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/075249189X.jpg?v=1750784616"},{"product_id":"great-siege-of-newcastle-1644-book-rosie-serdiville-9780752459899","title":"The Great Siege of Newcastle 1644","description":"In the autumn of 1644 was fought one of the most sustained and desperate sieges of the First Civil War when Scottish Covenanter forces under the Earl of Leven finally stormed Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the King's greatest bastion in the north-east and the key to his power there. The city had been resolutely defended throughout the year by the Marquis of Newcastle, who had defied both the Covenanters and northern Parliamentarians. Newcastle had held sway in the north-east since the outbreak of the war in 1642. He had defeated the Fairfaxes at Adwalton Moor and secured the City of Newcastle as the major coal exporter and port of entry for vital Royalist munitions and supply. Without this the north was lost. If anything, Newcastle was more important, in strategic terms, than York and it was the city's fall in October which marked the final demise of Royalist domination of the north. The book tells the story of the people who fought there, what motivated them and who led them there. It is also an account of what happened on the day, a minute-by-minute chronicle of Newcastle's bloodiest battle. The account draws heavily on contemporary source material, some of which has not received a full airing until now.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49946733347089,"sku":"GOR006117497","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0752459899.jpg?v=1750818133"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-rosie-serdiville.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}