Rare war images published

A never-before published sketch used to aid the escape from the beaches of Dunkirk is among the rare documents featured in a new book on the Second World War.

The War on Paper: 20 Documents That Defined the Second World War explores the conflict through a series of rarely-seen papers.

Published by the Imperial War Museums (IWM), the book also features more than 50 images, extracts from letters and diaries, maps and posters charting the conflict.

The key documents range from Adolf Hitler’s signed directive ordering the invasion of Poland in 1939 to Winston Churchill’s annotated “End of the Beginning” speech made after the Allied victory at El Alamein in 1942. There is also the hastily scribbled “diagrammatic lay out of embarkation” by Captain Ken Theobald that was used by the British Expeditionary Force to flee from Dunkirk in 1940.