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The borderers - people forged and hardened by endemic warfare over
generations, whether by raids and skirmishes or set piece battles -
are marked even today as a distinct group. For three savage
centuries England and Scotland, both dynamic races, slogged it out
upon this arena of nations. Scott might have reinvented the border
as a sweep of chivalric romance, but the reality was very
different. John Sadler knows this ground and its people; he is one
of them. For half a century he has traversed the borderland, and
has taught, enacted and written about them. In this book he offers
a uniquely personal but highly informed view. He neither praises
nor condemns them, but seeks to understand and, perverse as it may
seem, admires them. History leaves its imprint and like the
proverbial stone cast into still waters, it sends out ripples
through time that never quite abate. The feuds were pursued with
increasing savagery and even when not in outright conflict, the
names on both sides continued their 'feids' or vendettas in crazy
bloodletting for decades, with cycles of escalating violence
creating a dizzying maze of interlocking enmities that was beyond
all reason. The late, great George Macdonald Fraser once remarked
that the borderers were free in a way we can never imagine. And
they were. Here is a book that weighs the evidence from a plethora
of sources to provide a compelling history of this border conflict.
In the modern political scene, with the issue of a second
referendum pending, the theme of a cultural identity, forged in the
fury of those Border wars, forms a pivotal theme in the debate.
Flodden , September 1513. Across a boggy valley, two armies
confront each other. The Scots, backed by European allies, have
superior numbers and the latest cannon to challenge a depleted
English force. The English are furious and humiliated that they are
not fighting alongside King Henry against their real enemy in
France. The Battle of Flodden would prove one of the bloodiest ever
fought on British soil, shaping Scottish national identity to this
day. Sir Thomas Howard, shrewd but ancient, leads the English
forces. Alexander, 3rd Lord Hume, bold but impetuous, leads the
Scots. Isabella Hoppringle, Abbess of Coldstream, young and
determined, struggles to keep her footing among the tides of
violence. John Heron, Bastard of Ford, swaggering, violent, and
disreputable, the black sheep of a good English family, finds
profit while men die. Blood Divide sets us right at the heart of
the action; the stink, sweat and fear, the curtain of red mist.
If Richard III had not charged to his death at Bosworth, how
different might the history of Britain have been?
Beginning in 1453 and ending in 1487, "The Red Rose and the
White" provides a gripping overview of the bitter dynastic struggle
for supremacy that raged between the houses of York and Lancaster
for thirty years, culminating in the dramatic events on Bosworth
Field in 1485.
As well as offering a comprehensive account of the campaigns,
battles and sieges of the conflict, the book also assesses the
commanders and men involved and considers the weapons and tactics
employed. Photographs, maps and portraits of the principal
characters help to bring the period to life, whilst the fast-paced
narrative conveys a sense of what it was actually like to fight in
battles such as Towton or Tewkesbury the effect of the arrow storm
and the grim realities of hand-to-hand combat with edged and bladed
weapons.
Skilfully weaving in political and social events to place the
conflict in its context, "The Red Rose and the White" is a
fascinating exploration of the turbulent period that would change
the course of British history forever.
If Richard III had not charged to his death at Bosworth, how
different might the history of Britain have been? Beginning in 1453
and ending in 1487, The Red Rose and the White provides a gripping
overview of the bitter dynastic struggle for supremacy that raged
between the houses of York and Lancaster for thirty years,
culminating in the dramatic events on Bosworth Field in 1485. As
well as offering a comprehensive account of the campaigns, battles
and sieges of the conflict, the book also assesses the commanders
and men involved and considers the weapons and tactics employed.
Photographs, maps and portraits of the principal characters help to
bring the period to life, whilst the fast-paced narrative conveys a
sense of what it was actually like to fight in battles such as
Towton or Tewkesbury the effect of the arrow storm and the grim
realities of hand-to-hand combat with edged and bladed weapons.
Skilfully weaving in political and social events to place the
conflict in its context, The Red Rose and the White is a
fascinating exploration of the turbulent period that would change
the course of British history forever.
Border Fury provides a fascinating account of the period of
Anglo-Scottish Border conflict from the Edwardian invasions of 1296
until the Union of the Crowns under James VI of Scotland, James I
of England in 1603. It looks at developments in the art of war
during the period, the key transition from medieval to renaissance
warfare, the development of tactics, arms, armour and military
logistics during the period. All the key personalities involved are
profiled and the typology of each battle site is examined in detail
with the author providing several new interpretations that differ
radically from those that have previously been understood.
Border Fury provides a fascinating account of the period of
Anglo-Scottish Border conflict from the Edwardian invasions of 1296
until the Union of the Crowns under James VI of Scotland, James I
of England in 1603.
It looks at developments in the art of war during the period,
the key transition from medieval to renaissance warfare, the
development of tactics, arms, armour and military logistics during
the period. All the key personalities involved are profiled and the
typology of each battle site is examined in detail with the author
providing several new interpretations that differ radically from
those that have previously been understood.
The Little Book of Newcastle is a funny, fast-paced, fact-packed
compendium of the sort of frivolous, fantastic or simply strange
information which no-one will want to be without. Here we find out
about the most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric
inhabitants, famous sons and daughters and literally hundreds of
wacky facts (plus some authentically bizarre bits of historic
trivia). John Sadler's new book gathers together a myriad of data
on Newcastle. There are lots of factual chapters but also plenty of
frivolous details which will amuse and surprise. A reference book
and a quirky guide, this can be dipped in to time and time again to
reveal something new about the people, the heritage, the secrets
and the enduring fascination of the city. A remarkably engaging
little book, this is essential reading for visitors and locals
alike.
During the course of the Second World War, the Allies mounted a
series of attempts to prevent Germany from manufacturing heavy
water by utilising hydroelectric plants in occupied Norway. These
efforts comprised a mix of bomber and commando raids. The overall
aim was stop Nazi Germany building a nuclear bomb. In fact, Hitler
was never as close as the Allies thought, but the idea that his
regime could construct and deploy a device was the ultimate
Domesday scenario, one that would have tilted the balance in favour
of the Nazis. The mere threat might have been sufficient to force a
negotiated peace with the perceived reality of a Nazi bomb hanging
over the world like a nuclear-powered sword of Damocles.
Production, and therefore Allied aims, centred on the Vemork Power
Station standing by the Rjukan Waterfall at Telemark. A series of
daring raids, Operations Grouse, Freshman and Gunnerside,
neutralised the plant’s capacity. In Operation Freshman, every
single glider-borne paratrooper was either captured or killed. In
February 1943, a force of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded
in sabotaging the plant’s production capacity. Further
manufacturing effort was abandoned, and the Nazis attempted to
transport the heavy water they had about the ferry SF 'Hydro'. The
Norwegians managed to sink the vessel in the deep waters of Lake
Tinn. The stakes in any special forces raids in history have never
been higher.
On 21 July 1403 Sir Henry Percy - better known as Hotspur - led a
rebel army out at Shrewsbury to face the forces of the king Henry
IV. The battle was both bloody and decisive. Hotspur was shot down
by an arrow and killed. Posthumously he was declared a traitor and
his lands forfeited to the crown. This was an ignominious end to
the brilliant career of one of the most famous medieval noblemen, a
remarkable soldier, diplomat and courtier who played a leading role
in the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV. How did he earn his
extraordinary reputation, and why did Shakespeare portray him as a
fearsomely brave but flawed hero who, despite a traitor's death,
remained the mirror of chivalry? These are questions John Sadler
seeks to answer in the first full biography of this legendary
figure to be published for over twenty years. Hotspur's exploits as
a soldier in France during the Hundred Years War, against the Scots
in the Scottish borders and at the battles of Otterburn, Homildon
Hill and Shrewsbury have overshadowed his diplomatic role as a
loyal royal servant in missions to Prussia, Cyprus, Ireland and
Aquitaine. And, as the heir to one of the foremost noble families
of northern England, he was an important player not only in the
affairs of the North but of the kingdom as a whole. So, as John
Sadler reveals in this highly readable study, Hotspur was a much
more varied and interesting character than his narrow reputation
for headstrong attack and rebellion suggests.
For two years in the mid-thirteenth century England was torn by a
bloody civil war between the king and his nobles. For a short time,
the country came close to unseating the monarchy, and the outcome
changed the course of English history. Yet this critical episode
receives far less attention than the Wars of the Roses and the
English Civil Wars that followed. John Sadler, in this highly
readable and perceptive study of the Barons' War, describes events
in vivid detail. He explores the leading personalities, whose
bitter quarrel gave rise to the conflict - Henry III, his son
Prince Edward, later Edward I, and their most famous opponent,
Simon de Montfort, whose masterful charisma galvanized support
among the discontented nobility. The clash of interests between the
king and his overmighty subjects is reconsidered, as are the
personal and political tensions that polarized opinion and tested
loyalties to the limit. But the main emphasis of John Sadler's
account is on events in the field, in particular the two major
campaigns that determined the course of the war and indeed the
future government of England - the battles fought at Lewes and
Evesham.
The Second World War (1939-45) was not greeted with the same lavish
outpouring of patriotic fervour that had attended August 1914. Any
rags of glory had long since been drowned in the mud of Flanders.
The Great War had been heralded as 'the war to end all wars';
veterans were promised 'a land fit for heroes'. Both of these vain
boasts soon began to sound hollow as depression, unemployment,
poverty and a rash of new wars followed. The sons and daughters of
those who had embarked upon their own patriotic Calvary did so
again in an altogether more sombre spirit. One significant
difference between the two conflicts is that, whilst both were
industrial wars, the Second World War was far nearer the concept of
total war. The growth of strategic air power, in its infancy in
1918, had by 1939 become a reality. In this war, even more
widespread and terrible than the last, there were to be no
civilians. Death sought new victims everywhere; British citizens
were now in the front line, there was to be no respite, no hiding
place. This is the poetry and prose of those who were there,
ordinary people caught in the terrible maelstrom of mass conflict
on a scale hitherto unimagined; this is their testimony.
The Great War 1914 1918 was dubbed the 'war to end all wars' and
introduced the full flowering of industrial warfare to the world.
The huge enthusiasm which had greeted the outbreak of hostilities
in August 1914 soon gave way to a grim resignation and, as the
Western Front became a long, agonising battle of dire attrition,
revulsion. Never before had Britain's sons and daughters poured out
their lifeblood in such prolonged and seemingly incessant
slaughter. The conflict produced a large corpus of war poetry,
though focus to date has rested with the 'big' names Brooke,
Sassoon, Graves, Owen, Rosenberg and Blunden et al - with their
descent from youthful enthusiasm to black cynicism held as a mirror
of the nation's journey. Their fame is richly merited, but there
are others that, until now, you would not expect to find in any
Great War anthology. This is 'Tommy' verse, mainly written by other
ranks and not, as is generally the case with the more famous war
poets, by officers. It is, much of it, doggerel, loaded with
lavatorial humour. Much of the earlier material is as patriotic and
sentimental as the times, jingoistic and occasionally mawkish.
However, the majority of the poems in this collection have never
appeared in print before; they have been unearthed in archives,
private collections and papers. Their authors had few pretences,
did not see themselves as poets, nor were writing for fame and
posterity. Nonetheless, these lost voices of the Great War have a
raw immediacy, and an instant connection that the reader will find
compelling.
On 3 September 1650 Oliver Cromwell won a decisive victory over the
Scottish Covenanters at the Battle of Dunbar - a victory that is
often regarded as his finest hour - but the aftermath, the forced
march of 5,000 prisoners from the battlefield to Durham, was one of
the cruellest episodes in his career. The march took them seven
days, without food and with little water, no medical care, the
property of a ruthless regime determined to eradicate any
possibility of further threat. Those who survived long enough to
reach Durham found no refuge, only pestilence and despair.
Exhausted, starving and dreadfully weakened, perhaps as many as
1,700 died from typhus and dysentery. Those who survived were
condemned to hard labour and enforced exile in conditions of
virtual slavery in a harsh new world across the Atlantic.
Cromwell's Convicts describes their ordeal in detail and, by using
archaeological evidence, brings the story right up to date. John
Sadler and Rosie Serdiville describe the battle at Dunbar, but
their main focus is on the lethal week-long march of the captives
that followed. They make extensive use of archive material, retrace
the route taken by the prisoners and describe the recent
archaeological excavations in Durham which have identified some of
the victims and given us a graphic reminder of their fate.
The 2014 Scottish independence debate and the re-ignition of the
SNP's call for a second vote in the wake of Brexit - and indeed
Brexit itself - begs a reappraisal of what nationality and borderer
identity actually mean in the twenty-first century and how the past
affects this. As a borderer and historian John Sadler is uniquely
qualified to examine the border from Roman times to today. He's
been in these Marches all his life, read about their wild
inhabitants, traversed every inch and studied every castle, bastle,
tower and battlefield. In July 2010 in Rothbury, a latter-day
outlaw, Raoul Thomas Moat, a vicious petty criminal and murderer,
holed up in Coquetdale as hundreds of police tried to flush him
out. Nasty as he was, he became a kind of instant folk hero to
some. Four centuries ago, Moat would barely have been noticed on
the border - just another Reiver. From the Hammer of the Scots,
William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Mary, Queen of Scots, right
through to today's new nationalism, the story of the borderlands is
tempestuous, bloody and fascinating. And a 'Hot Trod'? If your
cattle were stolen there was a legal requirement to pursue the
rustlers within six days, otherwise you're on a less enforceable
Cold Trod.
D-Day, the Allied invasion of Europe, began on the night of 5-6
June 1944. At 07.00 hours on the 6th, Britain's First Corps and XXX
Corps came ashore on Sword and Gold beaches, to withering fire from
the entrenched German forces. Within the initial and critical
couple of hours some 30,000 soldiers, 300 guns and 700 armoured
vehicles were landed, a magnificent achievement and, though the
sands were soon choked with the mother of all logjams, exacerbated
by a swelling tide, the British were firmly lodged; a bridgehead
had been secured, albeit a rather flimsy one at this juncture. This
is the story of the British soldiers' experience of the beach
landings on that fateful morning - the spearhead of Operation
Overlord.
In the 18th century in the town of Gorkha, just north of Kathmandu,
ruler Prithvi Narayan fought campaigns against his neighbours and
the British. During the fighting his warriors, renowned for their
aggression and courage, gained the respect of the British, who
appreciated that the steadfast warriors would make excellent
soldiers. Upon the declaration of peace in 1816, a partnership was
born. This alliance would play a vital role in UK defence over the
next two centuries, from surviving the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and
fighting in the jungles of Burma to the Khyber Pass, which would
keep the Gurkhas in action for ninety years. The First World War
sent the Regiment to the trenches, where battalion after battalion
was decimated. Some 20 Gurkha battalions were deployed in the
Second World War, which was soon increased to 45 following Dunkirk.
Around 250,000 Gurkha soldiers would serve and were deployed most
significantly in North Africa but also served with distinction in
the Italian Campaign and Monte Cassino, as well as the decisive
battles of Imphal and Kohima in the Far East. Whilst the Gurkhas
saw a drop in overall numbers post-war, they have continued to make
integral contributions to many operations, including the Falklands
and in Afghanistan, which this book examines extensively, with a
special focus on Operation Herrick.�In The Gurkha Way, John
Sadler tells the story of the Gurkhas from their inception to
modern day through interviews, unpublished diaries and
correspondence.�With over 200 years' experience, these
steadfastly loyal soldiers are a link to an imperial past but also
a key component of the modern British army.�There is no other
comparable unit in any of the world's armies, (with the obvious
exception of the Indian Army), or one more respected and loved by
the British.
The origins of most of the west's Special Forces can be traced back
to the Long Range Desert Group which operated across the limitless
expanses of the Libyan Desert, an area the size of India, during
the whole of the Desert War from 1940 - 1943. After the defeat of
the Axis in North Africa they adapted to serve in the
Mediterranean, the Greek islands, Albania, Yugoslavia and Greece.
They became the stuff of legend. The brainchild of Ralph Bagnold, a
pre-war desert explorer, featured, in fictional terms in The
English Patient, who put all of his expertise into the creation of
a new and, by the standards of the day, highly unorthodox unit.
Conventional tactical thinking shunned the deep heart of the vast
desert as it was thought to be a different planet, a harsh,
inhospitable wilderness where British forces could not possibly
survive even less operate effectively. Bagnold, Pat Clayton and
Bill Kennedy Shaw created a whole new type of warfare. Using
specially adapted vehicles and the techniques they'd learned in
the'30s, recruiting only men of the right temperament and high
levels of fitness and endurance, the first patrols set out
bristling with automatic weapons. The 30-cwt Chevy truck and the
famous Jeep have become iconic, the LRDG, in a dark hour, was the
force which took the fight to the enemy, roving over the deep
desert - a small raider's paradise, attacking enemy convoys and
outposts, destroying aircraft and supplies, forcing the Axis to
expend more and more resources protecting their vulnerable lines.
Their work was often dangerous, always taxing, exhausting and
uncomfortable. They were a new breed of soldier. The Axis never
managed to equip any similar unit, they never escaped their fear of
the scorching wilderness. Once the desert war was won they
transferred their skills to the Mediterranean sector, re-training
as mountain guerrillas, serving in the ill-fated Dodecanese
campaign, then in strife torn Albania, Yugoslavia and Greece,
fighting alongside the mercurial partisans at a time the Balkans
were sliding towards communist domination or civil war. In addition
LRDG worked alongside the fledgling SAS and they established,
beyond all doubt, the value of highly trained Special Forces, a
legacy which resonates today.
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