Hooks and Eyes

Five pieces of iron wire on a grid, showing from top to bottom how they go from a straight piece of wire to a complex hook.

I’ve been repairing my 17th century style clothes, which has involved making hooks and eyes to replace some of the ones that have fallen off. It’s a pretty simple process, even though I’m not the handiest of people. Hooks and Eyes History I’ve got hooks and eyes on my clothes…

[Continue reading]

Destructive & Formidable by David Blackmore [Book Review]

Cover of Destructive and Formidable by David Blackmore

Destructive and Formidable: British Infantry Firepower 1642 – 1765 by David John Blackmore My rating: 5 of 5 stars Destructive and Formidable looks at British infantry doctrine using period sources from the British Civil Wars of the seventeenth century up to just before the American War of Independence. If anything…

[Continue reading]

1689 Reading List

So far this half a shelf is my 1689 reading list for the proposed megagame about the Glorious Revolution.  I’ve read some of this already, and marked up the interesting bits. Notably Bonnie Dundee and the Bruce Lenman books as well as Glencoe by John Sadler which sets the scene for…

[Continue reading]

Sixpence a Day and No Foreign Service!

Those of us that have attended English Civil War events may well have come across New Model Army soldiers shouting their demand for “Sixpence a day, and no foreign service!” Until recently I had always seen it as a request for a pay rise and also a guarantee of service…

[Continue reading]

The Beginning of Britain’s Civil Wars

Before I begin writing about Britain’s civil wars I thought there needed to be some baseline posts explaining why I’d chosen the boundaries to limit the scope of the blog. To start with here’s a view on the beginning of Britain as a political entity. The Beginning of Britain Geographically…

[Continue reading]

British Civil Wars Blog – Coming Soon

The British Civil Wars blog will be starting in the summer of 2017. It will cover any and all of the armed conflicts where people from the British Isles fought on both sides from the Union of the Crowns (in 1603) until the end of the 20th Century. British Civil…

[Continue reading]