Back in 1975, the first major project John Hannavy undertook for the Scottish Arts Council was the ground-breaking exhibition The Camera Goes to War, the first comprehensive exhibition to cover the photography of that war – itself the first to be extensively covered by te camera. That led to his 1975 biography of Roger Fenton, and over the subsequent thirty five years, the photography of Britain's many conflicts has occupied a great deal of John's research time. This book picks up the threads of those decades of research into the subject of the camera at war, and looks at how photography was used to explain and reveal each successive conflict to the people of Britain. It covers the period when military tactics changed from the medieval to the modern, and the period when sail gave way to steam. It also looks at the fascinating period from the 1890s through to the end of the Edwardian era when the Royal Navy re-equipped itself with some of the most impressive and powerful fighting machines afloat, and when the military explored the value of taking to the air.

The book will contain nearly 200 illustrations, the majority of them drawn from the John Hannavy Picture Collection's archive of Victorian and Edwardian photographs and postcards.

A publisher will be sought for this project as it near completion towards the end of 2010.