Böcker av Alexander McKee

'This is a fresh, interesting and richly detailed account of the Armada campaign' - The New York Times A dramatic narrative account of the 1588 English victory over the Spanish Armada. Perfect for fans of John Barratt, N. A. M. Rodger, Ben Wilson and everyone interested in naval history. The overthrow of the Spanish Armada in 1588 has come down in history as one of England's 'finest hours'. A small, inadequately equipped fleet put to rout the mightiest naval force ever assembled; great squadrons of ships, drawn from all the provinces of the Spanish empire, were sent scuttling in disarray round the north of Scotland, many to founder on the shores of Ireland. Drawing upon contemporary reports, diaries and letters, as well as original eyewitness accounts, Alexander McKee presents a dramatic reconstruction described by those who actually took part in the campaign, on both sides. The result is living history, a reassessment that reveals many parallels with the critical summer of 1940. Four-hundred-year-old voices speak to us of armies massing on the coast of the Low Countries; of the bumbling incompetence that eventually brought the cumbersome Armada within sight of England; of swift and devastating assaults by the English galleons; of the panic-stricken flight into the North Sea; and of hardship and death and, throughout the action, a desperate need for more ammunition and food. Seen as a vivid documentary, the reasons why the deadly threat of Spain collapsed in ruins are thrown into high relief. Written by the discoverer and excavator of the Mary Rose, an historian and diver well able to understand the eccentricities of wind and current that Drake and Hawkyns used to such good effect, From Merciless Invaders is an outstanding contribution to the study of naval warfare.

A gripping collection of historical aviation mysteries! For true-life mystery fans and readers of Michael Hardwick, Sylvia Wrigley and Keith McCloskey. The history of aviation is rife with unexplained events which continue to baffle experts today: aircraft which leave the ground but never come in to land - swallowed up into the blue; flyers who meet inexplicable deaths - and of their ghosts, which return to haunt the living; and the great mysteries of airborne warfare... Who shot down the Red Baron? What caused Amelia Earhart's disappearance over the Pacific in 1937? How did a US President's brother meet his death in the skies above England whilst on a wartime mission? From the legend of the 'Montrose Ghost' and the L-8 airship which landed without her crew aboard, to the giant explosion in Portsmouth at Christmas 1940 which left nineteen streets completely destroyed, Into The Blue is an intriguing and enthralling collection of the most bizarre puzzles of aviation. Drawing upon official reports, eyewitness testimonies and his own experiences, pilot and author Alexander McKee examines these and many more mysteries of the air in this gripping collection of cases from aviation history. 'Absorbing reading ... will provoke your own thoughts and stimulate your imagination with a feast of speculative what ifs...' - Pilot 'Compulsive reading ... difficult to put down' - RAF News 'A rather macabre but thoroughly good read' - Sunday Standard

The remarkable true story of the discovery and excavation of the Tudor warship Mary Rose. Ideal for readers of David Childs, Brian Lavery and Douglas McElvogue, and everyone interested in British naval history. In October 1982, Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose finally broke the surface off the coast of Portsmouth after more than 400 years on the seabed. Her dramatic sinking during an engagement with the French fleet in July 1545, under the very eyes of King Henry VIII, had been a disaster at the time, but for the team that finally found the Tudor warship it was a scene of jubilation after long years of searching. Here diver and author Alexander McKee details how he and a small team of dedicated amateur divers, all willing to work without pay at weekends, risked their lives diving under busy shipping lanes and in treacherous weather to painstakingly search for the ship that nobody believed was there - and found her, in what became the most important maritime archaeological project in British history. How We Found the Mary Rose tells the remarkable story of the ship herself: her thirty-four years of service at sea and her final sinking during the Battle of the Solent; the subsequent attempts to salvage the historic wreck, and McKee's own seventeen years of research and excavation in quest of a dream that came true. 'This is the perfect adventure story. In Alexander McKee, diver and author of popular histories, there are all the elements of the hero out of boys' comics. He went against accepted theories when he started looking for the ship he had heard of as a boy on the Isle of Wight. His attempt became a joke, but deep in the silt McKee found the Mary Rose.' - Byron Rogers, Sunday Telegraph Magazine 'This is the most accessible account of the Mary Rose.' - submerged.co.uk