Edgehill 1642: Surveying the disastrous scene in the aftermath of the first battle of the English Civil War Oliver Cromwell realizes that war can no longer be made in the old feudal way: there has to be system & discipline & therefore
- eventually
- a standing professional army. From the New Model Army of Cromwells distant vision former soldier Allan Mallinson shows us the people & events that have shaped the army we know today. How Marlboroughs momentous victory at Blenheim is linked to Wellingtons at Waterloo; how the desperate fight at Rorkes Drift in 1879 underpinned the heroism of the airborne forces at Arnhem in 1944; & why Montgomerys momentous victory at El Alamein mattered long after the Second World War was over. From the Armys origins at the battle of Edgehill to our current conflict in Afghanistan this is history at its most relevant
- & most dramatic.