Rome was liberated on 5 June 1944 but the Italian campaign had another eleven gruelling months to run. The US Fifth and British Eighth Armies drove across the Arno River, capturing Florence on 5 August. Once again The Wehrmachts Tenth and Fourteenth Armies eluded destruction, withdrawing into the Gothic Line in the Northern Apennines. The Eighth Army, advancing along the Adriatic coast and the Fifth Army in the mountains north of Florence penetrated this strong German defensive belt between 25 August and the end of September. Yet the Allied campaign stalled due to a lethal combination of supply and manpower shortages, the early onset of winter and the rugged terrain favouring the German defenders.The Allied April spring offensive saw Eighth Army breakthrough the Argenta Gap into the Po Valley, while Fifth Army captured Bologna.. After crossing the Po River the Allies fanned out across Northern Italy, before the Nazi surrender on 3 May 1945.These dramatic events are described in words and images in this superb Images of War book.

Observations made during a summer spent in northern Italian towns between Rome and the Swiss border.

Throughout the middle and late Republican periods (fourth to first centuries BC) the Romans lived in fear and loathing of the Gauls of northern Italy, caused primarily by their collective historical memory of the destruction of the city of Rome by Gauls in 387 BC. By examining the literary evidence relating to the historical, ethnographic, and geographic writings of Greeks and Romans of the period - focusing on invasion and conflict - this book attempts to answer the questions how and why the Gauls became the deadly enemy of the Romans. Dr Williams also examines the problematic notion of the Gauls as 'Celts' which has been so influential in historical and archaeological accounts of northern Italy in the late pre-Roman Iron Age by modern scholars. The book concludes that ancient literary evidence and modern ethnic presumptions about 'Celts' are not a sound basis for reconstructing either the history of the Romans' interaction with the peoples of northern Italy or for interpreting the material evidence.