What should you read before you go to Britain’s first dedicated military history festival?
Photo credit: Smith Archive via Alamy
The inaugural Hereford Military History Festival is set to bring together acclaimed authors, historians and military experts for three days of talks, panel discussions, historical walking trails and performances across historic venues in Hereford.
In our latest issue, History of War heard from four leading historians ahead of their talks at the festival. They reveal the books, magazines and primary sources that have been most inspirational and insightful for their work.
Hereford Military History Festival 2025 is taking place 26 to 28 September. Tickets for each talk can be purchased separately.
Between the Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks
Recommended by: Clare Mulley
“Among the many history books that inspire me, I regularly return to Leo Marks’ brilliant, often hilarious memoir, Between Silk & Cyanide,” says espionage historian Clare Mulley.
Marks entered the war aged 22, marching out of his father’s Charing Cross bookshop in 1942 with a black-market chicken tucked under his arm.
He joined the Special Operations Executive, which immediately recognised his skills as a cryptographic genius. Marks eventually rose to head the codes office supporting resistance agents in occupied Europe.
Marks is often remembered for his haunting and heartbreaking poem code “The Life That I Have,” penned for the SOE agent Violette Szabo. The memory of Marks’ girlfriend Ruth, who died in a plane crash, inspired the poem.
It is Marks’ skills as a wordsmith that Mulley reveres most about Between Silk and Cyanide: “He recalled of Szabo that, ‘everything about her was immediate, especially her impact’, while the words of a superior ‘weren’t so much clipped as stapled together.’ This brilliant book reminds me of the value of well-chosen words, in war, and in life.”
Mulley is scheduled to speak at the Hereford Military History Festival about her 2024 book Agent Zo. Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, the book tells the story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the only female member of Poland’s SOE-affiliated special forces. Poland’s Communist regime hid Zawacka’s remarkable story for over four decades.
Related: 23-year-old “tomboy” Violette Szabo faced down the SS to save her friends
Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm
Recommended by: Anne Sebba
Anne Sebba will speak at the Hereford Military History Festival about her book The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, a work inspired by Sarah Helm’s “scholarly and shockingly readable” book on Ravensbrück concentration camp.
“It showed me in appalling detail that a book about a concentration camp, with women as the heroines, was not only possible but necessary to show the world how women suffered in wartime,” reflects Sebba.
The Nazi regime built Ravensbrück in 1939 as a women-only camp inside Germany. Political prisoners, including spies and resistance fighters, made up the majority of those held in the camp.
Camp officials forced inmates to conduct slave labour for Siemens & Halske, including the construction of V-2 rocket parts, textiles and electrical components. A further 86 prisoners were involved in medical experiments.
Famous figures killed in Ravensbrück include Violette Szabo, executed alongside the SOE courier Denise Bloch and wireless operator Lilian Rolfe. Shortly before the war’s end, 24,500 prisoners embarked on a death march north towards Mecklenburg.
After the war, the Hamburg Ravensbrück trials sentenced sixteen of the camp’s SS guards, female Aufseherinnen guards, and former prisoner-functionaries to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Related: Holocaust survivor Nanette Konig on Anne Frank and the last days of Bergen-Belsen
The Roll of Honour and War Record of the Artists Rifles, 1914-1919 edited by S. Stagoll Higham
Recommended by: Patrick Baty
The eccentric Artists’ Rifles first emerged in 1859 during a volunteer movement against a potential French invasion, formed by a creatives’ collective.
It later became one of 26 volunteer battalions that formed the London Regiment and participated in the First World War. Known for its recruitment from public schools and universities, The Artists’ Rifles produced vast numbers of officers during the Great War. Baty will appear at the Hereford Military History Festival to discuss his research into the regiment.
The Roll of Honour and War Record of the Artists Rifles, 1914-1919 remembers the men’s service during the First World War. Baty explained why the work has been so helpful for his research: “It lists the 15,022 men who served and the regiments to which 10,256 were commissioned (including the RFC and the Royal Navy).
“The casualties are also indicated, as are the 1,852 honours with the citations for the awards for gallantry.” Alongside being an invaluable resource for professional and amateur historians alike, the collection is also an extraordinary achievement.
“How such a detailed work could have been compiled before the advent of computers is a testament to the dedication and efficiency of the original editor,” Baty says.
Magazine: | Recommended by: Paul Beaver
Air Pictorial magazine
Recommended by: Paul Beaver
Photo: D and S Photography Archives via Alamy
“It was my father’s present of a subscription to Air Pictorial, a monthly black & white magazine, in 1965, which clinched that aviation interest,” says military aviation historian Paul Beaver.
The magazine covered contemporary and historical military and civil aviation. It was first published under the title Air Defence Corps Gazette in 1939. Over the following 19 years, it changed title a further four times, eventually becoming Air Pictorial.
Air Pictorial magazine arrived at the newsstand for the final time in 2002 and continues as Aviation News, a publication that had been incorporated into Air Pictorial in 1996.
However, you can still find print back issues of this classic magazine to purchase online and occasionally in charity shops. Furthermore, some issues have been digitised and are available online.
Beaver is set to appear at the festival to discuss his recently released biography of Reginald Mitchell. This visionary engineer is famous for leading the team at Supermarine that designed the Spitfire and collaborated with Rolls-Royce to power the airframe.
Hereford Military History Festival will run from 26 to 28 September. Tickets for each talk can be purchased separately.