The Making Of The British Army - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Allan Mallinson is a former infantry and cavalry officer of thirty-five years' service worldwide. He is the author of the Matthew Hervey series, and of Light Dragoons, a history of four regiments of British Cavalry, one of which he commanded, and which has been recently revised and updated. As well as writing on defence matters for The Times and formerly for the Daily Telegraph, he is a regular reviewer for The Times, the Spectator and the Literary Review.

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In this sweeping account of nearly 500 years of military history, former soldier Allan Mallinson looks at how the Army's dramatic past has made it one of the most effective fighting forces in the world today.

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Edgehill, 1642: on a Warwickshire hillside, four thousand men lie dead and wounded.

Oliver Cromwell, commanding a troop of cavalry, rides on to the field in the aftermath of the first battle of the English Civil War. Surveying the disastrous scene, he realizes that war can no longer be made in the old, feudal way: there has to be system and discipline, and therefore - eventually - a standing professional army.

From the 'New Model Army' of Cromwell's vision, Allan Mallinson shows us the people and events that have shaped the army we know today: how Marlborough's momentous victory at Blenheim is linked to Wellington's at Waterloo; how the desperate fight at Rorke's Drift in 1879 underpinned the heroism of the airborne forces in Arnhem in 1944; and why Montgomery's momentous victory at El Alamein mattered long after the Second World War was over.

This is the story of hard-won military experience: of military campaigns with lines of communication that snaked through Europe, Africa, Asia; and of pitched battles in alien lands in which the odds were overwhelming, and where victory was snatched often by the narrowest of margins.

From the Army's birth at the battle of Edgehill to our current conflict in Afghanistan, this is history at its most relevant - and most dramatic.