A simple tale of a young man joining up and going to war with an alien race, ‘the Bugs’, hides layers of deep and complex moral and political philosophy, the core of which is the notion that social responsibility requires individual sacrifice.

The award-winning science fiction writer imagines a world in which the European population died of the plague in the fourteenth century and in which China, India and the Islamic world come to dominate. Essentially an alternate history and a novel of ideas, this is a challenging book that rewards the reader on a number of levels.

Based on a book of the same name, this award winning film was released in 1954. It tells a fictional story of a minesweeper crew operating in the Pacific Theatre during World War Two.

Set in the first few days after the successful D-Day landings in Normandy, Spielberg’s award-winning film offers some intensely realistic depictions of late-Second World War combat, especially in the opening half hour sequence devoted to the Rangers’ landing at Omaha Beach.