This is the final Volume (No VII) of a monumental work completed by O’Connor just before his sad death a year ago. It covers Eight German States and the Three Free Cities and is quite mind bending in its completeness and complexity – this Volume alone weighs 5lb! Honesty requires me to declare that medals are not for me, but I was taken in and charmed by this extraordinary book, and the easy beautiful language in which it is written. At random, Chapter VI deals with The Merit Order of Philipp the Magnanimous, founded in 1840, being the third ranking Order of the Grand Duchy of Hesse – the two more senior ones having been dealt with in Chapter V. Full descriptions of all its various grades, and some wonderful photographs of the medal and some men who were awarded it. One of them was Oberleutnant Ferdinand von Hiddesen. He bombed Paris from a Taube on August 30 1914, dropping four small bombs over the side which were reported to have killed one woman and injured several other people. He also dropped a red white and black streamer (the German Colours), 2½ metres long reading: ‘The German Army is at the gates of Paris. There is nothing you can do but surrender’. He was eventually shot down over Verdun with the carburettor of his machine on fire. Chivalrously conducted to hospital by French fliers, he spent the rest of the war as a POW. There is a splendid picture of him sitting in his Eindekker, which epitomises another great feature of this book. The Author apologises because there are so many well known images about, and has made a great effort to introduce some hitherto unknown ones, to great effect. And that is just one of the hundreds of men written about. The Index of Names in the Main Text reveals all the usual suspects, and is very full; for example Edmund Allenby is there, not because he got The Princely Schaumberg-Lippe Cross for Faithful Service, but simply because one of our heroes was shot down the day he launched an offensive in Palestine. on top of that, there are 65 Appendices, a large bibliography, and a kind word for Cross & Cockade with the Membership Secretary’s correct address attached. This is the culmination of a massive and never to be surpassed feat of scholarship to which all serious students will want to have access.