''Ambitious, wide-ranging and learned'' Times Literary Supplement

''Vivid and extraordinary'' Wall Street Journal

From Boudicca to Ukraine, battlefields have always contained a surprising number of female fighters. We have all heard of Joan of Arc, but not the cross-dressing soldiers whose disguises were so effective the men around them never realized who they were fighting with.

Forgotten Warriors shines a light on women in war, from the Mino, the all-female army that protected Dahomey from the West for two hundred years, to the Night Witches, Soviet flying aces that decimated the Nazis. Against a backdrop of sieges and desperate battles, rebellions and civil wars, Sarah Percy brings these extraordinary women to life, and sets the record straight.

''Vulnerability, strength and defiance . . . in exploring the history of women in combat, Forgotten Warriors tackles their exclusion from the historical record'' The Spectator, Books of the Year

''Fascinating'' BBC History

''Magnificent . . . could not be more timely'' The Monthly

''Truly impressive and rigorously researched, this book should be in all libraries'' New York Journal of Books