Consciously fashioned in part as a refutation of arguments advanced by Victor Davis Hanson, Lynn agrees with the latter on the key importance of culture in shaping the ways nations fight, and on little else.

While there can never be one definitive volume on a topic as vast and varied as ‘war’, Gwynne Dwyer has done an admirable job of writing a book about the custom of war, placing it within historical and cultural contexts.

The recent emphasis on ‘culture’ as an explanation for differences in the ways that armies, nations and peoples fight is subjected to critical scrutiny and found wanting, at least in the more simplistic ways in which ‘culture’ has been offered as a key factor in the changing character of war. Porter argues that ‘culture matters’, but that it must be used carefully like any other complex analytical tool if it is not to mislead.

Another volume from the highly prolific pen of Jeremy Black, this book examines the cultural dynamics of warfare. He argues that culture, like any other variable, is a changeable and not a constant force in military activity and that cultural ‘explanations’ for military behaviour and outcomes need to be used with discrimination and an awareness of the dangers of simplification.

This is a work of panoramic scope that examines the interplay of technological and social change, warfare and shifts in epochal constitutional orders.

This account expands on Hastings’ explosive revelations for Rolling Stone magazine in which he accompanied General Stanley McChrystal and staff across Europe in 2010 to build additional allied assistance for the US-led war in Afghanistan.

This is an important (though intemperate) study of the relationship between officer education and the evolution of command culture culminating in the Second World War.

The classic book on just war theory, originally published in 1977.

A discussion of how just war theory has changed through history and how it might apply in the modern world.

As the subtitle suggests, this book examines some contentious issues in modern warfare, including limitations on the use of both lethal and non-lethal weapons, assassination and targeted killing, terrorism and counterterrorism, and humanitarian military intervention.