Saturday, 25 July 2026
Monday, 15 June 2026
The Keys of Hell and Death Charles Cordell
I really enjoyed this second book in the Divided Kingdom series. Set during the Lansdown Roundway and Bristol episodes it tells the tale of characters caught up in the events such as Morgan Pascoe a pikeman in Grenvilles which I liked.
Friday, 5 June 2026
God's Vindictive Wrath Charles Cordell
Been enjoying this novel. Starts at Edgehill and progresses after that. Follows about 10 characters from different sides and it seees the battle and aftermath from their perspective. Very gritty and very well researched. I was impressed. Looking forward to the next one in the series.
Sunday, 24 May 2026
Friday, 22 May 2026
Divided Kingdom series Charles Cordell
Just ordered these from the Library. Looking forward to reading them. Bumph for the first one reads
The Vale of the Red Horse, Edgehill, Warwickshire, October, 1642. Bitter divisions that have grown unchecked in the kingdoms of the Stuart dynasty are about to engulf England in a bloody civil war. 30,000 men have gathered to determine the fate of nations and to pursue their own ideals and enmities through brutal and bloody combat. Many have never handled a weapon or strayed far from their native shire.
Among them are Anthony Sedley the Birmingham iron worker and Leveller, Robbie Needham, an embittered lead miner from Derbyshire who picks up a pike for his king, George Merrick, the young Oxford graduate whose prospects have been blighted by court corruption, Hywel Lloyd, a proud Welsh hill farmer, and William Bennet the struggling merchant who has staked everything to raise a company for the parliamentary cause.
Then there are the half-brothers, Ralph and Francis Reeve, sons of a Suffolk farmer. Pious Francis has abandoned his studies at Cambridge to make England a New Jerusalem, cleansed of sin and filth. He despises his carefree brother and the father who seems to favour him. Caught cuckolding a London merchant, Ralph has forfeited his apprenticeship and indenture money. He dreams of restoring his honour and his fortune when he returns to London with the king's victorious army. But first the brothers must face each other in the Vale of the Red Horse, the horse whose rider is War... God's vindictive wrath!
The second novel of the visceral Divided Kingdom series sees the action turn westwards to Bristol, where a Royalist army is determined to wrest the city from the forces of Parliament.Once again, the story revolves around the vicious enmity of the Reeve brothers: carefree and dissolute Ralph and embittered and fanatical Francis. Also caught up in the conflict are Moussa Dansocko, an African slave accused of sorcery, Kendall Tremain, Cornish fisherman and tinner, Abel Cowans, a former naval gunner from Newcastle and others, all with their own diverse reasons for siding with one cause or the other in England's bloody civil war.
Monday, 18 May 2026
Friday, 13 March 2026
Fiction series of camp-followers in the 30 Years War
Die Trossfrau: Historischer Roman (Dreißigjähriger Krieg-Reihe)
The story of The Trossfrau by Carmen Mayer is a historical novel that recounts the events of the Thirty Years' War. Magdalena, who lives in her village near the Austrian-Bohemian border, is thrown out of the house by her father out of fear and distrust. She is taken to Krems, where she gets caught between the Catholic and Protestant fronts of the war. With toil and hardship, she manages to earn her living and eventually enters into a marriage. However, her life is marked by the encounter with a witch who puts her in danger. Magdalena's novel troupe is a mixture of friends and enemies she finds on her journey through the war.
Saturday, 27 December 2025
Memoirs of a Cavalier audiobook etc.
Some fiction that you might like in audio and online.
Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) is a work of historical fiction by Daniel Defoe, set during the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil Wars. The full title, which bore no date, was:[1]
Memoirs of a Cavalier; or A Military Journal of the Wars in Germany, and the Wars in England. From the Years 1632 to 1648. Written threescore years ago, by an English gentleman, who served first in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, the Glorious King of Sweden, till his death, and after that in the Royal Army of King Charles the First, from the beginning of the Rebellion to the end of the War.[2]
Tuesday, 14 October 2025
New historical fiction
London 1508 - Henry VII is dying. Courtiers are circling, waiting, and quietly forming a new court around the soon to be Henry VIII. One of these is Thomas Wolsey, chaplain to the old king and clearly destined for a great career in both church and state. In Great Yarmouth, Wolsey's old friend Peter Larke is also dangerously close to death. Peter's sons are priests and their paths clearly marked. But then there's Joan. Unmarried and soon to be alone, her uncle John insists her only option is to become a nun. Her spirit seems broken and lost but Wolsey, a priest sworn to celebacy, suggests a shocking solution...Wolsey's Wife by N J Turton
Thursday, 9 October 2025
Vauban - Le Piège malouin
French comic series. Here
Vauban, grand architecte militaire de Louis XIV, est chargé de fortifier et de défendre Saint-Malo. Il doit aussi déjouer les complots qui le menacent.Le Piège malouin est le premier volume d'un diptyque autour de Vauban. La BD est scénarisée par Jean-François MINIAC et dessinée par Andrea Rossetto.
Monday, 29 September 2025
Johann Grimmelshausen Abenteuerlicher Simplizissimus - Teil 1
Teil 2 Sorry there are no subtitles for thia ao it is for German readers. It is a famous book that was written about the 30YW. I read it once. If you want to read it go here.
Simplicius Simplicissimus (German: Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch) is a picaresque novel of the lower Baroque style, written in five books by German author Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen published in 1668, with the sequel Continuatio appearing in 1669. Inspired by the events and horrors of the Thirty Years' War which devastated Germany from 1618 to 1648, it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language and the first German novel masterpiece.
The full subtitle is "The account of the life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim: namely where and in what manner he came into this world, what he saw, learned, experienced, and endured therein; also why he again left it of his own free will."
Sunday, 31 August 2025
The Recruiting Officer by George FARQUHAR (1677 - 1707)
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
Saturday, 7 June 2025
The Children of The New Forest Episode 1 (1977 British Series)
Episode 2 Ep 3 Episode 4 Final
During the English Civil War in the 1640s, Colonel Beverley, a Royalist, squire of Arnwood and High Keeper of the New Forest, leaves to join the King's army. He dies at the Battle of Naseby, leaving his two sons and two daughters in the care of their Aunt Judith. A troop of Parliamentary soldiers and their Leveller preacher, Abel Corbould, come to Arnwood. The four Beverley children are smuggled out of Arnwood, taken to Jacob Armitage, a royalist forester's home in the forest and hidden there. The children encounter various adventures, become involved with the family of Parliament's new Intendant of the New Forest, Heatherstone, and eventually join a conspiracy to help King Charles, who has escaped from captivity.
Tuesday, 3 June 2025
Lorna Doone (2000) - Opening
This famous story is up in parts on Youtube. Wiki on the series. Rotten Tomatoes reviews
In the shadow of the Monmouth Rebellion, the rural plains of Exmoor are host to their own battles. Exmoor is the domain of the Doones, a lawless and ruthless family of fallen nobles who rule the area savagely, thieving and killing whoever stands in the way. It's here that the peasant farmer John Ridd (Richard Coyle) attempts to live a simple, honest life, until he falls in love with the beautiful Lorna (Amelia Warner), not realizing she's a Doone.
Jefferys and Kirke are depicted as is James II
Sunday, 25 May 2025
Charles Cordell - author of English Civil War fiction
Monday, 19 May 2025
Captain Alatriste
Been looking on ebay for the novels that the film is based on. Quite reasonable. Anyone read them? Wiki
![]() |
| By Diego Velázquez - Museo del Prado, Madrid, |
Saturday, 17 May 2025
1685 fiction
A tale of loyalty, sacrifice, jealousy and betrayal set against the backdrop of the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685.
Nathaniel Carver and Thomas Edgecott are lifelong friends having been born within days of each other in the Dorset seaport of Lyme Regis in 1664. Nat works with his father John in the family smithy, Thomas is a shoemaker. William Pearce, a weaver from Taunton is old enough to be their father and gamekeeper Samuel White is older still, having fought with Oliver Cromwell at Marston Moor some twenty years before Nat and Thomas were born.
Nat, Thomas, John, William, Samuel and thousands of other ordinary West Country men are thrown together by the arrival of James, Duke of Monmouth, on the south coast in 1685, intent on wrestling the crown of England from his uncle, James II. The ill-fated rebellion will last for little more than three weeks but it will change all their lives forever.
This is their story.
Friday, 21 February 2025
Memoirs of a cavalier, or, A military journal of the wars in Germany and the wars in England by Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731
If you are more interested in the 17thc. Wiki








