These were both in the UK Kindle Daily Deal email, listed under "Kindle Deals up to 75% off":
Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain
£1.29
Quote:
Stephen Bungay's magisterial history is the definitive book about this central event in Britain's history and mythology. Unrivalled for its synthesis of all previous historical accounts, for the acuity and intelligence of its strategic analysis and its sheer narrative drive, it is a book ultimately distinguished by the trenchancy of its conclusions -- that it was the British in the Battle who displayed all the virtues of efficiency, organisation and even ruthlessness we habitually attribute to the Germans, and they who fell short in their amateurism, ill-preparedness, engineering sub-standards and even in their old-fashioned notions of gallantry.
An addictive read and gripping throughout, this book is a classic of military history.
Stephen Bungay is Director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London. He is the author of Alamein (Aurum) and Making Strategy Happen (Nicholas Brealey 2009.) Since the first publication of The Most Dangerous Enemy in 2000, the author has become a respected authority in television documentaries, and lectures on the Battle to the RAF itself.
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The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The WWII Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women Who Worked There
£1.09 (and if you buy the Kindle book, you can get the Audible audio book for £1.09, rather than the usual £16.60)
Quote:
Bletchley Park was where one of the war’s most famous – and crucial – achievements was made: the cracking of Germany’s “Enigma” code in which its most important military communications were couched. This country house in the Buckinghamshire countryside was home to Britain’s most brilliant mathematical brains, like Alan Turing, and the scene of immense advances in technology – indeed, the birth of modern computing. The military codes deciphered there were instrumental in turning both the Battle of the Atlantic and the war in North Africa.
But, though plenty has been written about the boffins, and the codebreaking, fictional and non-fiction – from Robert Harris and Ian McEwan to Andrew Hodges’ biography of Turing – what of the thousands of men and women who lived and worked there during the war? What was life like for them – an odd, secret territory between the civilian and the military?
Sinclair McKay’s book is the first history for the general reader of life at Bletchley Park, and an amazing compendium of memories from people now in their eighties – of skating on the frozen lake in the grounds (a depressed Angus Wilson, the novelist, once threw himself in) – of a youthful Roy Jenkins, useless at codebreaking, of the high jinks at nearby accommodation hostels – and of the implacable secrecy that meant girlfriend and boyfriend working in adjacent huts knew nothing about each other’s work.
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