William

Double Cross spies, secret armies and unsecret publishing

I’m really enjoying Deceiving Hitler, published in September. I remember the thrill of reading The Double Cross System in the War of 1939-45 when it was published in the ‘70s by Yale University Press and wishing the University Press I then worked for had got in first. I didn’t immediately appreciate that the author, J C Masterman’s University Press of choice would naturally have been Oxford rather than Cambridge, and that he had gone to the USA and Yale because the British Government and security services were firmly opposing the book’s publication in the UK! Masterman was a key architect of the greatest counter-espionage and deception campaign of all time in his role as Chairman of the Twenty (XX) Committee, the ultra-secret element of MI5 responsible for counter-esponage and deception.

The Roman invasion that never was

Julius Caesar is more popularly associated with the Roman invasion of Britain than the Emperor Claudius. However, whilst the former carried out a useful reconnaissance in 45BC, penetrated a much larger area with a considerably stronger force in 44BC, and ultimately won decisive victories in both years, he left no occupying force behind. This did not arrive until 43AD when Claudius’ general Aulus Plautius established a bridgehead at Rutupiae, modern Richborough, in an excellent natural harbour on the Kent coast. The shoreline is now two miles away from the remains of the substantial fort, but excavations earlier this year have pinpointed the beach which the Roman ships would have been pulled up on under the protection of the earthworks. The quite widespread media coverage of the Richborough dig and its revelations led me to an earlier article reporting “astonishing new archaeological finds” that proved “the history of Britain will have to be rewritten. The AD43 Roman invasion never

My Salamis Campaign 7: Overview Writing and Reading

A couple of weeks ago Campaign: Salamis 480 BC was presented at one of Osprey’s fortnightly Publishing Meetings, which wield power of life & death over all projects, and it was commissioned: I am now officially an Osprey author. The delivery date of June next year still seems comfortably far off but this commitment has brought about a swift change of gear from what has been a very enjoyable research ramble (literally, on the island itself at the top end of the battlefield) to the somewhat more disciplined business of writing.

Napoleonic Competition Results

Well, we seem to have stumped quite a few of you with the competition that I ran last month. I asked you to name the eight victories listed around Napoleon's tomb to stand the chance of winning five Napoleonic titles of your choice.

Death on the Nile

The British Museum have followed their excellent "First Emperor" show with the equally gripping "Hadrian: Empire and Conflict". Hadrian is generally best known in Britain for his wall. This spectacular feat of military engineering, as important symbolically as tactically for the control of this north-west frontier of the vast Roman empire, formed only a part of the legacy of Hadrian's two decades of rule as one of Rome’s greatest emperors.

Napoleonic Competition

Visiting Paris earlier in the year I spent half a day in the Musee de l’Armee in Les Invalides and hardly scratched the surface, even with the vast Napoleonic section closed for major renewal work. I started with what must be must be the largest collection of suits of armour that can be seen anywhere. It became a little wearing, in fact, inspecting this mile-long parade through room after room, but for those with an eye for the evolutionary detail, it’s all there! The shining steel, much of it so elegant, contrasted intriguingly with the assorted Kevlar of the CRS detachment relaxing in the street outside the nearby cafe we had lunch in.

The Sound of Vulcans over Mull

Seeing recent footage of the magnificently restored Avro Vulcan XH558 reminded me of an extraordinary experience I had back in the 70s when the V-bombers were such a distinctive element of Britain’s cold-war weaponry...

Alternate Occupation, Resistance and Collaboration

In a post back in May I touched upon some of the still very live concerns raised by the World War II occupation of France. I was sharply reminded of these by a great novel I read the other day, Resistance by Owen Sheers. Its alarmingly convincing background is Britain in 1944-5 with Russia defeated, the Normandy landings rolled back and a successful German invasion and occupation.

My Campaign Salamis 6: Cruising the Straits

I’m back from a wonderful fortnight in Greece , some Osprey research, some culture (Athens and Delphi) and quite a lot of pure lotus-eating. There was a major demonstration and some strike action on our first day so, eager as I was, we decided not to entrust ourselves to the public transport system, which we needed to get us to Salamis. Parliament seemed to be well defended, but clearly the police needed elite army support

My Half-Track Neighbour

On my regular route into Oxford , which takes me through the neighbouring village of Kirtlington ( great pub! ) I occasionally pass a beautifully preserved Half Track , surreally perched on the grass verge in front of a row of houses on a country lane. When I have time to stop and take a photograph or two, I never have my camera with me...

More of the greatest generation

A couple of days after my last post on the subject, two more amazing individuals were celebrated in obituaries on the same day, again heroes from the French Resistance and the Royal Air Force...

My Salamis Campaign : Part 5

In my previous Salamis post I ventured to disagree with Professor Barry Strauss over his representation of the overnight manoeuvres of the Persian fleet and its position at dawn just before the fighting began. I have been finding his book on the battle, and his other writing on Greek naval warfare in general, all several years more recent than the literature I was previously familiar with, tremendously helpful. However, as I wrote to him (only fair to give advance warning of the public assault on his academic reputation about to be launched from this blog!), “I just find it too improbable that they would have risked moving all the way...

What happened on MY birthday?

Well, Phil may have started something with his post on April 24; I had a birthday (rather bigger than his) coming up four days later and thought I should see what I could find. If you want to see what happened in US military history on yours, try this, and here’s my own selection for April 28...

"King of England this day I shall die"

The BBC aired a short documentary on the Battle of Bosworth the other day. Advance publicity promised revelations about the true location of the battle with the implication that the fine visitor centre was therefore wrongly positioned on Ambion Hill. However, this is very widely accepted as the site of Richard III’s camp and of his initial position, attacked or at least advanced upon by Henry Tudor...

The Greatest Generation

Tom Brokaw’s 1998 bestseller celebrated “the greatest generation”, the US citizens who fought in World War II “not for fame or recognition, but because it was the right thing to do". This term repeatedly springs to mind as, more than sixty years on, our newspapers’ obituary pages continue to recall the extraordinary bravery, and combat and other skills that were displayed by so many individual men and women...

Doughboy's letter in a bottle Pt 2: Dreadnoughts and gum

I can never resist reading random pages of our old newspapers as I bundle them up for recycling, because I always find something good that I missed. On the same day as my post went up about the story of Sgt Liepmann and his lovingly preserved letter from Aunt Pete, I came across its happy ending...

Pistols at twelve paces

I went to a book launch the other day. It could be described as a family affair as the author was my cousin, Giles Hunt, and the book was "The Duel".

Writing an Osprey book - My Salamis Campaign (part4)

I am just about ready to submit my Bird’s-Eye View (BEV) and Battlescene efforts to Marcus, the Series Editor I will be working with. We have worked closely before when we were co-editors of Osprey Military Journal. I’m not sure if that makes his power of life or death over my enterprise more or less comfortable, but he’s a nice guy and really knows what he’s about...

Doughboy's letter in a bottle and a chance to win signed copies

Nice story in the papers recently about an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) artillery sergeant who buried a letter in a beer bottle in Lorraine in 1918, presumably to keep it safe. It was from his "Aunt Pete" in Oklahoma...

Writing an Osprey book - My Salamis Campaign (Part 3)

Research has been going well. My Bodleian card gives me access to the superb Sackler Library and I already have answers to most of the questions I had lined up a couple of weeks ago, giving me a pretty good idea of what the landscape and coastlines of the island of Salamis and mainland Attica could have looked like from the south-east, the angle I think I have now settled on for my bird's-eye view of the battle...

Writing an Osprey book - My Salamis Campaign (Part 2)

Before getting a contract, an Osprey first-timer obviously has to give fair evidence of knowing about his or her chosen subject, and of being able to write. But there is another hurdle to be cleared and this is both highly challenging and, very probably, unique to Osprey...

How to write an Osprey book - My Salamis Campaign

I formally retired from Osprey in December but will happily be staying involved in much the same way as I began in 1999, doing various freelance and consultancy jobs. To these I am hoping to add some writing, and I have started work on a proposal to do Salamis 480 BC for the Campaign series.

Teaching Military History

Back in July Richard set off a lively discussion about the place, desirable and actual, of military history in education with his post "When did military history go out of fashion?" In the course of this discussion I mentioned that we had invited a distinguished military historian to write a short article making the case for military history...

War Music - Beethoven's Battle Symphony et al

Following on from Joe's post about the music of war, I heard Beethoven’s 10th Symphony the other day (he actually seems to have slipped in between the 7th and the 8th). This is his fascinating Battle Symphony, or Op.91 Wellingtons Sieg oder Die Schlacht bei Vittoria, if you must. Ludwig originally wrote it as a bit of a pot-boiler...

300 - A great war film or just CGIed abs and pecs?

I missed seeing 300 when it was breaking box office records and provoking rather unmerited heavyweight controversy. Our recent discussion about war movies, the publication of our Campaign title on Thermopylae, my personal interest in the period and its wars, and its release on DVD prompted me to buy a copy...

Sniper Aces

I have been enjoying an early copy of our lead summer title Sniper, in bookstores this month. It chronicles the evolution of the US marksman and his weaponry from colonial times to the present. There is evidence that sniping and counter-sniping took their place on the battlefield at least as early as King's Mountain in 1778...

Battlefield Touring

Reading about Gettysburg the other day made me think of the place. Often a historic battlefield is fairly featureless, sometimes no more than a few fields or a hillside, making it very hard (for me anyway) to visualize the action or get any real feeling of the drama enacted there, beyond the resonance of the names...

Civil War Stories and Characters

I have just joined James Reasoner's Civil War Battle Series at Gettysburg, the sixth in his ten-book chronicle of the fortunes of a Virginian family. It isn't "Cold Mountain" on the home front nor "The Killer Angels" in the line of fire, but it's an enjoyable, well-crafted read and you don't need...