Pen & Sword Books

The story of the Jacobite Rebellions really began in 1534, when King Henry VIII changed the official religion of England from Catholic to Protestant. The narrative then continued through turbulent times of civil war and religious and political strife, leading to tensions and discontent boiling over when the Catholic King James II came to the throne in 1685; whereupon he was immediately beset by a Protestant rebellion led by the Duke of Monmouth, which set a chain of events in motion, resulting in William III and Mary II being crowned as Joint Monarchs after a bloodless coup.It was James’ removal from the throne which created the spark for his supporters to orchestrate a series of revolts, known as the Jacobite Rebellions; the name coming from the Latin for James — Jacobus. These uprisings, which included the rebellions from the Highlands of Scotland, and the Williamite Wars in Ireland, also formed part of the wider picture of a European war, known as the Nine Years War; the War of the Grand Alliance; or the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697). During which, King Louis XIV of France strived to realise his expansionist plans while enforcing the Catholic religion and continuing to promote the Jacobite cause for his own ends.Later, King Louis XIV was instrumental in initiating another conflict in Europe; the Spanish War of Succession 1701–1714, which led the French to continue to support, Jacobite risings in Scotland during the same period and beyond, ultimately leading to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s audacious bid for the British throne in 1745.The ‘45 rebellion was eventually put down in the crushing military defeat at Culloden in 1746 when the last pitched battle on British soil finally sounded the death knell for the Catholic and Stuart monarchy. However, the legend of the dashing prince, who came so near, but yet so far in his bid to win the throne back for the Stuarts, is still very much alive in Scotland, especially as he continued to frustrate an enormous government manhunt to capture him, amidst a savage backdrop of reprisals being wreaked on the Highland Jacobites.

The explosive findings within this book are history-changing. They discount the age-old belief that Captain James Cook, the great circumnavigator, left no modern direct descendants. Using compelling, detailed and verifiable evidence, Colin Waters completely unravels, for the first time, the full fascinating story concerning the mysterious supposed 18th century drowning of his son, James Cook junior. The author also presents genealogical evidence to support old rumours that after faking his own death, James traveled to North Yorkshire where he joined his wife & son, leaving behind him a scandal that resulted in him being virtually expunged from all official naval records. The Royal Navy cover-up that resulted matches any modern-day conspiracy theory and gives credence to all those who today claim to be direct descendants of the famous Captain James Cook R.N.

By the mid-1930s the obstacles to high speed that aircraft designers faced included the question of cooling the engine. This was a big challenge that those working on the new fast aeroplanes entering service as the war clouds gathered over Europe had to consider, as the drag from the system increased as a square of the speed. Ducted systems were designed which lowered drag, but these were based on the assumption that the system was cold. This ignored the potential energy from the air, heated by the radiator, for liquid-cooled aircraft, and from the discharged engine exhaust gases.It took a profoundly lateral thinker to harness the possibilities of the paradox that heat could cut the cost of cooling. That thinker was the British engineer Frederick William Meredith. A researcher at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough until 1938, F.W. Meredith a key player in the UK’s development of the autopilot and remote-controlled aircraft. His contribution to Allied success in the Second World War was enormous — but, incredibly, he was also a known a Soviet agent.Few would doubt that the Supermarine Spitfire was a pioneering aeroplane — not because it was an all metal, monoplane with retractable undercarriage and enclosed cockpit as these were not unique — but because it was the first to incorporate a Meredith designed ducted cooling system. This was intended from the beginning to use heat to create ‘negative drag’. In practice the Spitfire’s design was flawed, as Meredith himself pointed out, and did not fully use what became known as the ‘Meredith Effect’.Meredith also made entirely overlooked but extremely important contributions to resolving the problem of how to induce air smoothly into cooling ducts at high speeds without which, as the Spitfire demonstrated, ducted cooling systems worked sub-optimally.The first aeroplane properly to exploit the ‘Meredith Effect’ was the North American P-51 Mustang, this being a very significant factor as to why it was 30mph faster than the Spitfire when both had the same Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.This book by Peters Spring examines the life of the remarkable, and controversial, F.W. Meredith, an individual who has largely been forgotten by history despite the brilliant advances he made — advances which helped the Allies win the war against Hitler’s Third Reich.

Now celebrating its tenth edition, _World Naval Review_ provides an affordable but yet authoritative summary of global naval developments over the past 12 months. Regional surveys of fleet evolution and procurement by editor Conrad Waters are supplemented by in-depth articles from a range of subject experts focusing on significant new warships, technological advances and specific navies.Features in this edition include extended reviews of the new aircraft carriers USS _Gerald R. Ford_ and HMS _Queen Elizabeth_, the largest ships ever to serve in their respective fleets. Technological subjects include assessments of naval communications by Norman Friedman and autonomous systems by Richard Scott, whilst David Hobbs’ usual review of naval aviation is expanded to include a broader analysis of key trends over the last decade. Meanwhile, reviews of specific fleets focus on the navies of Canada, Peru and Singapore, all medium-sized naval powers at critical — if very different — phases of their development.Firmly established as providing the only annual naval overview of its type, World Naval Review is essential reading for anyone — whether enthusiast or professional — interested in contemporary maritime affairs.

Harry Edward Vickers, aka Flannelfoot, was possibly Britain’s most successful ever burglar. Not financially — he stole cash and low-value items (even, bizarrely, false teeth!). The success was in his hundreds of burglaries spread over many years without being caught. The lives of career criminals are invariably dotted with prison sentences, but thanks to his caution and cunning, Flannelfoot operated night after night, year after year with an impunity which embarrassed the police.In the twenties and thirties, Londers were deserting the overcrowded capital for the burgeoning suburbs of ‘Metroland’. Flannelfoot was equally attracted to these areas, and one of his hallmarks was to steal a bicycle at the scene of his last break-in of the night and cycle to the nearest tube station.Burglars and burglaries are never glamorous, but one reason why the Flannelfoot saga engendered fascination more than fear is that he was never confrontational, never violent, and in fact so stealthy that few ever saw him.His one-man crime epidemic led to Scotland Yard assembling a team more used to solving murders than the plundering of gas meters. After a lengthy and painstaking investigation, a carefully planned night-time surveillance operation involving several teams of officers led to the sensational capture of Flannelfoot.Flannelfoot routinely features in crime anthologies and was the subject of a feature film, but this is the first full biography of the man who became a legend in his own lifetime.

Death comes for us all in the end. But it does not always come in a way you might expect. Throughout history there have been people who have suffered extraordinary, unusual, and downright weird demises. In Strange Ways to Die in History you will find out about the true stories behind unlikely stories of bizarre accidents, assassinations, and misadventures. Did a playwright really die from a tortoise being dropped on his head by an eagle? Why did an English vicar end up being eaten by lions? And what are the chances of fatality from falling into a toilet?Looking at the lives that came before the deaths reveals some of histories most fascinating individuals. Some of those examined are well known. Some are remembered only for the odd way they departed this life. Some have been forgotten entirely. Sometimes how a person dies, and how history has recorded the event, can tell us a lot about society and how we remember.This book uncovers eye-witnesses to the deaths described and contemporary reports from those who were left behind.

From spooky stories and real-life ghost hunting, to shows about murder and serial killers, we are fascinated by death — and we owe these modern obsessions to the Victorian age.Death and the Victorians explores a period in history when the search for the truth about what lies beyond our mortal realm was matched only by the imagination and invention used to find it.Walk among London’s festering graveyards, where the dead were literally rising from the grave. Visit the Paris Morgue, where thousands flocked to view the spectacle of death every single day.Lift the veil on how spirits were invited into the home, secret societies taught ways to survive death, and the latest science and technology was applied to provide proof of the afterlife.Find out why the Victorian era is considered the golden age of the ghost story, exemplified by tales from the likes of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oscar Wilde and Henry James.Discover how the birth of the popular press nurtured our taste for murder and that Jack the Ripper was actually a work of pure Gothic horror fiction crafted by cynical Victorian newspapermen.Death and the Victorians exposes the darker side of the nineteenth century, a time when the living were inventing incredible ways to connect with the dead that endure to this day.

From the demon-killing Minamoto no Yorimitsu to the immortal poet Ono no Komachi, find out about the fascinating world of Japanese warriors and folk-heroes.Japanese mythology is filled with stories of larger-than-life characters that shaped the landscape of Japan. They are the folk heroes who slayed monsters, fought in epic battles and reflected the most complicated emotions of the people who created them. Through a mix of essays, short stories and anecdotes, Japanese Fighting Heroes follows the lives of samurai, warriors, outliers and iconoclasts who forged their own paths. Legendary fighters like the demon-killing Minamoto no Yorimitsu, philosophising samurai Miyamoto Musashi, and the One-Eyed Dragon Date Masamune. Creative heroes like the father of Japanese short stories Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the immortal poet Ono no Komachi, the hilarious Sei Shonagon and her insight into human nature. Trailblazers who broke down barriers like the feminist Hiratsuka Raicho, the statesman Fukuzawa Yukichi, the photographic genius Hiroshi Hamaya. These Japanese folk heroes led fascinating lives that provide insight into our own through the principles and practices they lived by. They struggled with universal ideals of honor, duty, courage and kindness, helping them transcend their culture. Whether you’re looking to learn about Japanese history, fall down a philosophy rabbit hole or pick up new mental health habits, these heroes can teach us timeless lessons. Japanese Fighting Heroes captures the essence of what it means to be human in any culture.

In December 1922, the distinguished foreign correspondent Leonard Spray warned Britain to ‘keep your eye on Hitler’.The carnage of the so-called ‘war to end all wars’ had left 900,000 British servicemen dead, and more than 2 million suffering physical and psychological wounds, but there was hope. The vanquished had been left with no military capacity to wage another war, and with a huge debt to pay to the victors. The Treaty of Versailles had surely made it impossible for the world to ever again be threatened by Germany?Safe in that knowledge, Britain now had her eye firmly set on new challenges. The cost of the war had already triggered her decline as the world’s greatest economic power. The Great Depression that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929 now saw Britain riven by unemployment and poverty. Seven General Elections between 1918 and 1935 resulted in mostly minority and coalition governments, bringing further uncertainty.And all the time, an Austrian ex-corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler was on the rampage, first with his ‘swashbuckling gangs’ in Bavaria, and then on an inexorable march to power throughout the rest of Germany and beyond.Life in Britain and Germany on the Road to War tells the story of one of the most eventful, tumultuous and heart-breaking periods in history. The twenty-one years that separated the First and Second World Wars and that eventually saw everyone’s eyes firmly fixed on Hitler.

Since before the time of Alexander the Great trained soldiers have sold their expertise on battlefield around the World, fighting and dying in other people’s wars for money, glory or the lust for violence and combat. In this book Harry McCallion explores the development of modern mercenary forces from the British SAS led deniable operation in Yemen in late 1960’s, during which the Israelis were persuaded to arm the SAS led Yemeni tribesmen, through the bush wars in Africa, Britain’s ill fated intervention in the war in Afghanistan right up to today’s War in Ukraine. Many of the modern day British mercenaries were known to the author personally. including such notably figures as the legendary SAS Fijian warriors ‘Tak ‘ Takevesia who, although in his early sixties shot his way out of an ambush in Bagdad and Fred ‘Big Fred’ Mrafano who devoted himself to the cause of the people of Serra Leone. SAS veteran. Bill Scully who received the Queen's Gallantry Medal single-handedly protected 1,300 civilians from rebel troops during the uprising in May 199 7after the Sierra Leone coup and American Vietnam veteran Major ‘Mac’ Mackenzie, who although badly wounded in Vietnam, rose from trooper to command a Rhodesian SAS squadron and was one of the units most highly decorated soldiers.Also included are more notorious figures like Costas Georgiou also known by his alias Colonel Callan who served in the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment but was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to five years in prison for a post office robbery, later he proclaimed himself a ‘Colonel’ and led a group of psychopathic mercenaries in the Angolan War of Independence, before being captured and executed by Angolan forces. The book explores the roles of modern day mercenaries, who’s use has expanded precisely because they are mercenaries, fighting for money and not love of country, their deaths are not seen as a patriotic sacrifice, often they go unreported and in turn helps to conceal the true tragic human cost of waging a war. As one former private military contractor recently stated to Australian TV “If you want to conquer in the 21st century…you use mercenaries, special forces, things to keep war secret and nobody’s better at secret wars than mercenaries.”

Although Africans and African Americans have been left out of most accounts of the Revolutionary years, this book pieces together their emerging path toward freedom. From Britain came the Great Awakening, the advent of evangelism in America, which would provide slaves with hope for future freedom. In 1775, black emancipation commenced in Chesapeake Bay with Lord Dunmore’s proclamation and the resulting fleet, which attracted blacks, creating the first mass emancipation of slaves in British colonial history. At the end of the War for Independence, the British evacuations of loyal subjects from 1782 to 1785 were the turning point in the Emancipation Revolution. A majority of free and enslaved blacks would remain where the Royal Navy transports landed them in Jamaica, the Bahamas, Nova Scotia, or Britain. Blacks’ love of freedom is concluded with the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire.

At the beginning of the 20th century Morris dancing had all but died out in much of England. It was militant suffragettes and slum girls who kick-started the revival that returned the forgotten dances of the countryside to towns and villages across the nation. As a result of their commitment to preserve and pass on the dances, the Morris survived as a living tradition that is still performed to this day. And the impetus to do so came from the women’s aspiration to change society for the better, the same impetus that drove them to militant action and to prison.The Morris revival and the militant suffrage movement were inextricably linked. The leader of the dance revival, Mary Neal, was a life-long radical campaigner for the rights of women and children. With her friend Emmeline Pethick she ran the Esperance Girls’ Club in one of London’s most deprived areas. She and Emmeline both sat on the national committee of Mrs Pankhurst’s militant Women’s Social and Political Union, the most notorious of the groups campaigning for the vote for women.The women’s embrace of traditional dance was rooted in Mary’s aspirations for equality and her commitment to social and political reform. The beginning of the dance revival and the launch of the militant suffragette campaign in London coincided almost exactly. Launched by a rather forlorn band of rebels, the WSPU grew into a movement capable of inspiring loyalty and loathing in equal measure. The Morris revival developed from an entertainment in a club for impoverished girls into a nationwide initiative. Mary and Emmeline’s associates in the dance revival ranged from young girls who worked in the militant campaign’s offices to hunger-striking daughters of the aristocracy.Mary and Emmeline provided the leadership and commitment that enabled two radical movements to flourish in the early years of the 20th century, but both found themselves marginalised after policy disagreements — with the folklorist Cecil Sharp and Mrs Pankhurst respectively — led to devastating splits in their respective organisations. Both then found themselves misrepresented and written out of the histories of movements which might never have got off the ground without them. Only in recent decades have women begun to reclaim their place in the Morris dance movement, the very existence of which is a legacy of the militant campaign for the vote.

We explore why the idea of the criminal class came into being. Starting with garrotters lurking in dark Victorian alleyways, the fiend Jack the Ripper stalking London’s streets to the menace of violent gangs, the ‘Scuttlers’, Peaky Blinders, and Liverpool’s High Rip, all the way through to 1970s joyriders, 1990s ravers, and the modern drug trade that brings guns and knives to our streets. It describes the actions taken to control the hard-core group — increasingly harsh punishments, executions, floggings, long prison sentences and the ways that society learns about crime, dangerous areas, and the people who habitually offend against society. How do we know what dangers apparently lurk in the inner cities? What part did the newspapers, authors and social investigators play in sensationalising some crimes, and were they right to do so? The book compares real-life criminals (and their lives) with fictional accounts, such as the Artful Dodger, Pinkie in Brighton Rock, and the scenes that social investigators such as Henry Mayhew dragged back from the criminal rookeries to entertain and frighten respectable people. Perhaps most importantly, the book shows which groups have been targeted as the criminal classes, particularly the young, as well as ethnic and racial minorities, and concludes by asking, “Who are the new criminal classes likely to be?“

Created during the Peace of Amiens, the nineteen regiments of cuirassiers that existed during the course of the 1e Empire were, after the Imperial Guard, perhaps the most famous and recognisable soldiers of the epoch. This book explores the long gestation of clothing and equipping the cuirassiers, the development of the arm from twelve regiments to twenty-one — if we include the carabiniers from 1811 — and how their clothing evolved across the period. As well as assessing the curiassiers, the story of the evolution of the uniforms of the carabiniers is also told. Much ink has been spilt on the two regiments and their uniforms, yet, as with the cuirassiers, precious little archive research has been carried out.This is one of a series of ground-breaking books which will be the defacto study of this perennially popular subject for historians, researchers, wargamers, re-enactors and artists. Using archive records to ‘set the record straight’, as well as contemporary illustrations and original items of uniforms, the author sets out to describe the uniform of every regiment of Napoleon’s army. Using archive sources found in the Archives Nationales and Service Historique du Armee de Terre in Paris, the author’s unrivalled research over a period of twenty years, will reveal exactly how, for the first time in over 200 years, Napoleon’s army was mounted, clothed and equipped.Having been granted to access to over 1,000 archive boxes, the author assesses how the regulations were adopted in practice. This vast resource, as yet untapped by the majority of researchers and historians for understanding the Napoleonic era in general, include the many regimental archive boxes preserved in the French Army archives. These sources provide, potentially bias free empirical data from which we can reconstruct the life story of a regiment, its officers and above all its clothing. What did trumpeters wear? Did cavalry regiments really have sapeurs? We answer these questions and present the reality of how regiments were dressed derived from diaries, letters, inspection returns, regimental accounts and even cases of fraud.For the first time, this unique series of books discusses the wide ranging 1806 uniform regulation and the more famous Bardin regulation which applied to all arms of the Army and explores the way in which regiments on campaign adopted and adapted their uniforms. For the first time since the days of Napoleon, we can say exactly what was worn by the French army.

In early October 1935 and without any declaration of war some two hundred thousand men, comprising soldiers and airmen of the Italian armed forces, Fascist ‘Blackshirt’ Militia, Eritrean ascari and Somali dubats, invaded the independent state of Ethiopia (Abyssinia). It was an operation entirely of choice, the chooser being Il Duce: Benito Mussolini. The resultant conflict is often described as a colonial war. while it was certainly launched with the intent of turning Ethiopia into an Italian possession, it was in fact a war of aggression against an independent, sovereign, state with membership of the League of Nations. A state that had, according to one of its nineteenth-century rulers, been ‘for fourteen centuries a Christian island in a sea of pagans’.The swiftness of the Italian victory resulted from their possession and ruthless use of technology; most particularly aircraft, mustard gas, and motorisation/mechanisation. Since they were fighting an enemy who possessed none of these things, then they were able to wage, indeed inaugurate, what the prominent military theorist JFC Fuller dubbed ‘totalitarian warfare’ or, as it became known a few years later, total war. This, he opined, was the Fascist, the scientific, way of making war. In his considered view, the Fascist Army that waged it was ‘a scientific military instrument.’ This book examines that campaign in military and political terms.

In November 2007 the body of British student Meredith Kercher was discovered in her bedroom in Perugia, Italy. She had been brutally killed. Over the course of the next eight years one man, Rudy Guede, would be convicted of her murder and two other suspects, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, would be convicted, acquitted and convicted again for their part in the crime, before having their convictions overturned for the final time in 2015.Almost two decades on from this horrific event Rudy Guede is now a free man, released in 2021 after spending 13 years in jail. Amanda Knox is married with a daughter and Raffaele Sollecito has slipped into relative obscurity.For many, Amanda was, and remains, the central character in this story. Why? And why the controversy? Through piecing together a timeline of events and investigating the conflicting opinions found in the countless books, articles, films, documentaries, and discussions which have emerged over the years, the author takes the reader on a journey to find out.Including interviews with often unwavering web forum users where posters pit allegations of corruption, coerced confessions, and flawed procedures against those of wilful deceit, callous disregard for life, damning forensics and inappropriate behaviour, Helen investigates if confirmation bias plays a part and asks the ultimate question; can any of us who weren’t there that fateful night ever really claim to know what happened?

The Isle of Man is predominantly a maritime nation. For many generations its menfolk have made their living from the sea, sometimes as fishermen, but often as crewmen aboard merchant vessels or warships. Indeed, such were their skills of seamanship that they were in great demand for the latter in time of war.As smugglers, or as privateers they made their living on the waves, in the Atlantic, Caribbean or Pacific. Whether taken by a Press Gang, or enlisted voluntarily, the Manx saw action in some of the greatest naval events between 1760 and 1815. The Isle of Man had a high degree of literacy and education even among the poor at this time, and consequently a significant body of first-hand evidence has survived from those who served below decks, aboard merchant ships, privateers and warships.Some, such as Peter Heywood, were eyewitness to the most famous event in naval history, the Mutiny on the Bounty. Others, such as John Quilliam climbed the naval career ladder, served with Nelson and gained distinction at the greatest sea battle in history, Trafalgar. One, Captain Hugh Crow, fought against the French, made his fortune in the slave trade, and commanded the last legal voyage.In this book we meet them all, and their words echo to us across the waves and down the centuries.

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer died at the hands of Native Americans by the banks of the Little Bighorn in Montana 25th June 1876. This is an established undisputed fact. What is disputed is the real reason that he died.So forget all you have been led to believe and begin to learn the truth. George Custer was anathema to his superiors, but the populace loved him. If he were to stand for president in the coming elections there was a strong possibility that he would win. Neither William T. Sherman nor ‘Little Phil’ Sheridan could allow that to happen. Thus, they conspired to put Custer in a position in the field where the opposing Sioux and Cheyenne were stronger and could deliver the ‘Coup de Gras’.This is the second of two books dealing with the circumstances that arose leading the Native Americans on a collision course with the US Army that fateful day and the death of a national hero. Subsequently the conspiracy is uncovered and shows how these men used their powers and positions and so deftly covered their tracks.Perhaps, but not quite.30 years of diligent research has uncovered the truth in this groundbreaking history. Unmissable and shocking, dare you not read this surprising revelation.

The ‘ShipCraft’ series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of popular warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief history of the subject, highlighting differences between ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring color profiles and highly detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the subjects, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references — books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites.The subject of this volume is the evolution of the Royal Navy’s fleet carriers as exemplified by those designed from the keel up for the role. Hermes was the world’s first purpose-built carrier, laid down in 1918, but she was followed by a series of conversions from other types and it was not until the mid-1930s that another was designed and built from scratch. This was the famous Ark Royal, a far larger and more capable ship, but destined to be a one-off as the Navy switched its focus to a ship capable of surviving in the most hostile environments. This requirement produced the radically different armored carriers of the Illustrious class, arguably the toughest aviation ships of the Second World War.With its unparalleled level of visual information — paint schemes, models, line drawings and photographs — this book is simply the best reference for any modelmaker setting out to build one of these challenging subjects.

Throughout the tenth century, England, as it would be recognized today, formed. No longer many Saxon kingdoms, but rather, just England. Yet, this development masks much in the century in which the Viking raiders were seemingly driven from England’s shores by Alfred, his children and grandchildren, only to return during the reign of his great, great-grandson, the much-maligned Æthelred II.Not one but two kings would be murdered, others would die at a young age, and a child would be named king on four occasions. Two kings would never marry, and a third would be forcefully divorced from his wife. Yet, the development towards ‘England’ did not stop. At no point did it truly fracture back into its constituent parts. Who then ensured this stability? To whom did the witan turn when kings died, and children were raised to the kingship?The royal woman of the House of Wessex came into prominence during the century, perhaps the most well-known being Æthelflæd, daughter of King Alfred. Perhaps the most maligned being Ælfthryth (Elfrida), accused of murdering her stepson to clear the path to the kingdom for her son, Æthelred II, but there were many more women, rich and powerful in their own right, where their names and landholdings can be traced in the scant historical record.Using contemporary source material, The Royal Women Who Made England can be plucked from the obscurity that has seen their names and deeds lost, even within a generation of their own lives.