And in my other life...

As some readers will remember I not only write wargames rules, but I published a proper history book last year, on the Battle of Edgcote in 1469. I did this because I'm the Secretary of the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society, and last year was the 550th anniversary. We then took a nice model built by Phil Steele round the shows. I'm sure I've mentioned this before.

The book, and indeed other publications the Society has done, are an important part of our role in promoting, protecting, and educating people about, Northamptonshire's military history. They also make a small amount of money for us, which helps to keep membership fees down.

When we do the shows or put on an event anywhere, we usually pop up the banner on the left. This lists the battles that we knew about when the Society started a few years ago.

Not all of the battles on there are well known.

And we get questions about those. More than the famous ones.

So we thought we'd probably better do a book about them. Which is what Mike Ingram (guru on Bosworth - not one of ours - and Northampton 1460) our chairman, and I, have been doing over the last 6 months. And it's about ready for publication. And we got some extra battles for the banner, too.

A lot of writing is about sitting at your desk and hitting the keyboard, but there's also books to consult, battlefields to walk and pictures to take, so the Coronavirus has played a bit of merry hell with that, but even so we've manged to get a text and pictures that we like done in the timescale we wanted. Sort of scuppered the launch at the Battlefield Trust AGM, alas.

The last month has been bashing it into shape. Making sure we don't contradict each other between chapters, and ensuring that the story is coherent. And proof reading. And editing. And revising. And re-proof reading.

Still. We're about done. Official launch date is 1st May, and we're taking pre-orders (there's more on how you can do this over on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Northampton1460/). Cover price is £9.99. Go on, order it.

So that's why I've been a bit quiet. I've also been sorting out how we're going to manage the postal sales, as we thought we'd give that a go this time round (we make an extra couple of quid a copy if we buy in bulk from Amazon and then sell on. Plus we get to put promotional stuff in the envelope and maybe get more paying members).

Chapters cover: Boudica's Revolt, Saxons & Vikings, Conquest to King John, Northampton 1264, Northampton 1460, Edgcote 1469, Newton Revolt, the ECW in Northamptonshire, the Siege of Grafton Regis, Naseby campaign & battle, Woodcroft House, The Black Watch Mutiny and the Battle of Waterloo. Yes. You read that right.