General Boy – The Life of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning by Richard Mead with a foreword by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh.

This is the first biography of ‘Boy’ Browning, whose name is inextricably linked with the creation and employment of Britain’s airborne forces in the Second World War. Commissioned into the Grenadier Guards, Browning served on the Western Front, earning a DSO during the Battle of Cambrai.

As Adjutant at Sandhurst, he began the tradition of riding a horse up the steps at the end of the commissioning parade. Browning represented England as a hurdler and Great Britain at the 1928 Winter Olympics. In 1932 Browning married Daphne du Maurier, who was ten years younger and became one of the 20th century’s most enduring and popular novelists with titles such as Jamaica Inn and Rebecca.

Browning commanded two brigades before being appointed to command 1 Airborne Division in 1941, later acting as Eisenhower’s advisor on airborne warfare in the Mediterranean. In 1944 he commanded 1st Airborne Corps, which he took to Holland for Operation Market Garden that September. Allegedly coining the phrase “a bridge too far”, he has received much of the blame for the operation’s failure.

In late 1944, Browning became Chief of Staff to Mountbatten. In 1948 he became Comptroller and Treasurer to Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip and then Treasurer to the latter following the Queen’s accession. He was a close adviser to the Royal couple who respected his judgment.

By this time Boy and Daphne lived separate lives with Boy working at the Palace in London and Daphne reluctant to leave her beloved Cornwall although the marriage remained intact. Questions exist as to Daphne’s sexuality and Boy had a succession of discrete mistresses. After a nervous breakdown probably due to marriage problems, he resigned in 1959 and retired to Cornwall. Browning died in March 1965.

John Lee’s Campaign Chronicle: Second Ypres 1915 – The Gas Attack – only 99p (Kindle and ePub editions).

‘Lee has written a very well documented book that follows the battle at the operational and battalion level. His book should be of interest to military career officers and history buff alike.’

The mist of poisonous gas that drifted across no man’s land from the German trenches opposite the Ypres salient on 22 April 1915 caused ghastly casualties and suffering among the unprepared defenders, and it opened up a huge seven-mile gap in the defensive line. It also signalled the beginning of a new and frightful era of industrialised warfare. John Lee’s graphic and perceptive reassessment of this milestone in the history of the Great War – and of the gruelling full-scale battle that followed – is one of the few full-length studies of the event to have been published in recent times.