Ark Royal Mike Rossiter (Bantam Press, £20) The hunt for the German battleship Bismarck was one of the greatest naval episodes of the Second World War. She had already sunk HMS Hood, pride of the British navy, with just three survivors from a ship's complement of 1,500. Enter the carrier Ark Royal, with Swordfish planes lashed to her decks. The Bismarck may have escaped into the Atlantic, but she herself now became the prey and she was crippled by the Swordfish with torpedo after torpedo, setting her up for the final salvo as she became a "floating butcher's block". The Ark Royal herself met her demise off the coast of Gibraltar, the victim of a German U-boat. One kilometre below the surface, she was rediscovered by Rossiter and a group of maritime experts in 2004. The story Rossiter relays so dramatically is the life and death of a warship which played a significant role in the defence of Britain.

The English Landscape in the Twentieth Century Trevor Rowley (Hambledon, £25) Rowley's book, perhaps more than any other on the culture of England's vanishing landscape, reflects the nation's lost values during the past century. The author paints a terrifying picture of how rural life - the heart of the country over 1,000 years - has given way to imitation suburbia up and down the land. Rowley is cutting on many aspects, blaming the First World War and its aftermath on the accelerated change from the horse-and-wagon world to the car-oriented society, with roads rigid in their restrictions. With hell-bent clarity, he savages the transformation, pointing out that agricultural land the size of Bristol is being "gobbled up" each year, no longer home to the farmer and his plough, the village becoming a "dormitory and a playground". Rowley's stirring prose is as dynamic as the revolution he portrays.

An Imperial Obsession David Mattingly (Allen Lane, £30) Forget about the romance of Britain during the Roman empire. There was very little of it, except that enjoyed by some of the elite. Mattingly's version of the 400-year occupation - the first in a generation - gets to grips with the real Roman Britain, a land far from Rome and a mysterious province, which Cicero wrote was "devoid of gold and silver" and the only booty was slaves. "There is nothing there for us to fear or rejoice at," he declared. Mattingly's mission has been to give a face to the fate of Britain under the Roman heel and he has done so brilliantly, with deep archeological penetration. His lucid sweep across fortress towns and rural areas covers many aspects of life. There were revolts, but the legions' iron fist always prevailed.