NOMINATE NOW!

Duke of Westminster Award for Military Literature

The deadline for sending in nominations to the Duke of Westminster Award has now passed.

Queries regarding the Duke of Westminster Award should be directed to the Studies Co-ordinator John Hemmings:
johnh@rusi.org

NOMINATE NOW

2008 Award nominations recieved so far

The Decline and Fall of the British Empire: 1781-1997
Piers Brendon

Commando Country
Stuary Allan

A Chronology of European Security and Defence 1945-2007
Julian Lindley-French

Four Weeks in May: The Loss of HMS Coventry, A Captain's Story
David Hart Dyke

Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present
Michael B. Oren

The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us
Robyn Meredith

China: Fragile Superpower
Susan L. Shirk

The Roman Triumph
Mary Beard

1812: War with America
Jon Latimer

Old World, New World: The Story of Britain and America
Kathleen Burk

Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend
Leo McKinstry

Churchill and his Generals
Raymond Callahan

Corps Commanders of the Bulge: Six American Generals and Victory in the Ardennes
Harold R. Winton

God & Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World
Walter Russell Mead

For the Soul of Mankind: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War
Melvyn P. Leffler

Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1783
Brendan Simms

Napoleon's Wars: An International History 1803-1815
Charles Esdaile

A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility
Taner Akcam

Bomber Boys
Patrick Bishop

Spitfire Women of WWII
Giles Whittell

Nemesis: The Battle for Japan: 1944-45
Max Hastings

Band of Brigands
Christy Campbell

3 Para
Patrick Bishop

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War
Chris Bellamy

Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland
Richard English

Imperial Defence: The Old World Order, 1856-1956
Greg Kennedy

The Good Soldier: The Biography of Douglas Haig
Gary Mead

Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Global Nuclear Weapons Consipiracy
Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark

The Crimean War: Queen Victoria's War with the Russian Tsars
Hugh Small

Nominations for the 2008 award of The Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature were received from authors, agents or publishers, as well as members of the Armed Forces in December 2007.

A shortlist has now been drawn up consisting of the following books:

The Decline and Fall of the British Empire: 1781-1997
Piers Brendon

China: Fragile Superpower
Susan L. Shirk

God & Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World
Walter Russell Mead

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War
Chris Bellamy

The Good Soldier: The Biography of Douglas Haig
Gary Mead

Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Global Nuclear Weapons Consipiracy
Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark

Created with the support of The Duke of Westminster, the Medal for Military Literature has been awarded annually since 1997. The award is given to a book by a living author, regardless of nationality, gender or age, which makes a notable and original contribution to the study of international and national security and defence.

The winning author will be selected from the above shortlist by an Awards Board  headed by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones in 2008. The winner will be presented with the Medal and a cash prize of £1,000 and invited to deliver a lecture on their work to a distinguished audience of peers at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), in Whitehall.

RUSI would like to thank all of those who have sent in nominations and hopes that this year's prize will be as exciting as the last.

More Information

Created with the support of His Grace, The Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military Literature has been awarded annually since 1997. The Medal is bestowed to a book by a living author, regardless of nationality, gender or age, which makes a notable and original contribution to the study of international and national security and defence.

The winning author will be presented with the Medal, a cash prize of £1,000 and invited to deliver a lecture their work to an audience of peers at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.

Previous winners of the medal include Hew Strachan, N.A.M. Rodger, John Keegan, Marrack Goulding and Percy Cradock.

Winner of the 2007 medal

Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary
Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali

Khrushchev’s Cold War is the untold story of the Kremlin’s goals during the Cold War years—and what it was willing to do to achieve them. In this portrait of an era that witnessed some of the most dangerous brinksmanship of the Cold War, Fursenko and Naftali brilliantly capture the man who, at the very height of his power, held the entire world in his thrall.

Shortlisted Books

Swords and Ploughshares: Building Peace in the 21st Century
Paddy Ashdown

Great Power Strategy in Asia
Jonathan Bailey

Dean Acheson: A Biography
Robert Beisner

Dusty Warriors: Modern Soldiers at War
Richard Holmes

Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea
Jeffrey T. Richelson

Winner of 2006 Medal

The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson
Roger Knight

"...probably the best single-volume Life that we are ever likely to see."

The starting point of Roger Knight's biography is to explain how Nelson achieved such extraordinary success. He analyses Nelson's more obvious qualities, but also demolishes many of the myths so carefully established by early authors.

Shortlisted Books

Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare
Colin Gray

Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919-1939
Keith Neilson

Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the making of the English Hero
Adam Nicholson

The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World
Rupert Smith

Winner of 2005 Medal

The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815
N.A.M. Rodger

"...erudite, full of authority and sparkling with originality. This book is the second volume of a trilogy that should become the pre-eminent work on British Naval History..."

The winner of the Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature 2005 is Professor Nicholas Rodger for his book The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815, the second in his three volume history of British naval power published by Penguin.

Click here to listen to
NAM Rodger's acceptance speech

Shortlisted books

The British Seaborne Empire
Jeremy Black

The Secrets of Rue St Roch: Intelligence Operations Behind Enemy Lines in the First World War
Janet Morgan

In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War
David Reynolds

1914-1918: The History of The First World War
David Stevenson

The Puppet Masters: Spies, Traitors and the Real Forces Behind World Events
John Hughes-Wilson

Winner of 2004 Medal

The Bomb, a Life
Gerard DeGroot

The medal was presented by the Duke of Westminster on Wednesday 21 April 2004.

Listen to Gerard DeGroot
Requires Windows Media Player 9

In addition, it was decided to award a second Westminster Medal for Military Literature this year to the National Army Museum, in recognition of the continuing contribution of their series of publications to this field.