Defending the island : from Caesar to the Armada
Longmate, Norman
Book
Total copies: 1
Main title:
Author:
Imprint:
London : Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 2012
Collation:
532 Pp.
Notes:
In a brilliantly imaginative blend of military, social and diplomatic history, Norman Longmate retells our island story from the perspective of its defenders, in a narrative which stretches from the Celtic tribes who unsuccessfully fought against Caesar to the great seaborne defence against the Armada of Philip of Spain. He has gone back to the original sources and investigated the actual battlegrounds and weak spots in Britain's defence. This is serious history, presented in an attractive, readable way and covering a panorama of Celtic and Roman history, the Dark Ages, the Saxon and Viking invasions, the Norman Conquest, the Plantagenet and Tudor periods and its great culmination in the nation's united resistance to the Armada."Defending the island" includes graphic accounts of sieges and guerilla warfare and descriptions, from writers of the time, of such epic set-piece battles as Hastings and Bosworth. Many lesser-known encounters are also covered in detail, such as the expulsion of the French from Lincoln in 1217 and their fiercely resisted raids on Dorset and Devon two centuries later.The emphasis is on military and naval history, with detailed accounts, for example, of the techniques of siege warfare, of the tactics used to attack a ship while it was regarded as a "wooden horse" rather than "a wooden wall", and of how the longbow came to defeat the crossbow and how gunpowder eclipsed both. But the story is set in the political context of the time, so that the reader learns why campaigns were fought and castles built as well as how and the extent to which the nation's defence policy was affected by economic factors, by personality clashes and by royal quarrels.In"Defending the island", Norman Longmate has applied the technique he pioneered in earlier works, like the now classic "How we lived then", and the best-selling "If Britain had fallen", of quoting extensively from contemporary chronicles, letters, poems and documents of all kinds.
Language:
English
BRN:
292863