The Beastly Battles Of Old England: The misguided manoeuvres of the British at war

Throughout history the English have been a warlike lot. Often we fight among ourselves – there have been a good few civil wars – and when we were not slaughtering each other, we practiced on our neighbours, the Scots, the Irish, the French… When that got too easy, we set off around the world to find other people to fight. This was usually done with a hubris that invited some ludicrous pratfall. In The Beastly Battles of Old England, Nigel Cawthorne takes us on a darkly humorous journey through some of our ill-advised military actions. From the war over a severed ear to a general seeking out his rival’s mistresses to even the score, it is a miscellany of insufferable arrogance, reckless gallantry, stunning stupidity, massive misjudgements and general beastliness.