Tag: Book Review

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Motherland: A Journey Through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity by Luke Pepera.

A review by Joshua Provan.

“Motherland is one of those books that unlocks corners of your mind. It opens up byways and connections you hadn’t noticed before and allows you to think about how things interact and inform at a deeper level.”

The Only Books There Were

In 1965 the American author & civil rights activist, James Baldwin addressed the Cambridge Student union. His subject of was whether or not the ‘American Dream’ had come at the expense of the ‘American Negro.’ After listening to the conflicting arguments delivered by two erudite undergraduates, Baldwin rose and took his place at the podium.

Image of James Baldwin four years after his debate in Cambridge where he illustrated the concept of the wrong types of books and the myth of a Historically bankrupt Africa
James Baldwin, 1969, by Allan Warren. Creative Commons License https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Baldwin_37_Allan_Warren.jpg

Baldwin made many points in his methodical and flawlessly cadenced speech, which lasted about 25 minutes. In so doing he illustrated the problems at the heart of the American Dream and what that dream had cost.

‘When I was growing up,’ Baldwin said, ten minutes from closing, ‘I was taught in American history books that Africa had no history and neither did I. That I was a savage, about whom, the less said the better, who had been saved by Europe and brought to America. And of course I believed it. I didn’t have much choice. Those where the only books there were.’

These words, spoken some 60 years ago, find an echo today at a time when writers, scholars and journalists are working to show people that Africa has and had a history. Motherland is a result of the vision and hard work of Luke Pepera, who is just one of many voices asking you to think deeper about what we think we know on this subject.

A Bad Unseen Place

It is not a question of an insufficient body of evidence or a lack of interest. The Library of Congress online database returns, 30,904 results from a search of history books and printed material published between 1960 and 2025 which include the keyword ‘Africa.’ Every year in western countries, books on African economy, sociology or history compete for space in bookstore windows.

Yet stereotypes persist. Why? Because, to our minds Africa is a place on TV where bad things happen, or it is a place of invisible, unseen, but recognised suffering.

In 2024, Dr. Mai Musié of the University of Swansea (now Senior Manager for Knowledge Evidence and Resources at NCACE) hosted a series of workshops with the aid of the Institutes of Advanced and Classical Studies of the University of London. The theme was to engage public, and especially diaspora, interest in classical history by examining African representation in the ancient world.

One of the speakers at the second workshop was Dr. Serawit Debele of the University of Bayreuth. In the course of her talk on finding her own identity as an Ethiopian and an African, in (as Pepera argues) potentially the most ethnically diverse continent in the world, she referred to the common perception in Europe of Africa being a place of pain, or punishment.

It is a modern stereotype with antique roots and in many cases, lacking the education and understanding to give context to the usually depressive, outrageous or inflammatory headlines we read, it is far easier for foreigners to label, accept and move on.

I remember when, after refusing to eat something as a child, I was given the ‘children in Africa’ lesson. To a child this lesson plants a seed, and the parent who deploys it is consciously or unconsciously using the concept of Africa as a place of pain to get their child to do something. Yet in so doing they divorce both parties from actually caring or understanding about what they are engaging with.

The reason for this is that, though examples of poverty and crisis in Africa are common, few care to look deeper. In a line from the action movie Sahara (2005) the villainous military dictator, played by Lennie James observes that because his crimes are happening in Africa everything would be all right because: ‘nobody cares about Africa.’ A solid piece of screenwriting, or a glib bit of character building? That is up to the viewer, but though oversimplified, it does truthfully represent the attention span, and capacity of most of the movie’s audience.

Conflicts and famines in the continent are seen as unavoidable, easily excused, dismissed as typical, endemic, or they are not seen at all. One need only attempt to start a conversation about the war in Sudan, the crisis in Tigray or the conflict in Congo to name a few of the most recent to see how little anyone knows or cares about what is going on south of the Mediterranean Sea. To most people, whatever is happening is happening in Africa, and that is usually enough to end the conversation.

The Challenge.

Caught between ignorance, pity, and disinterest; telling the story of Africa, is a great challenge. It is, however, a vitally important one to accept in today’s increasingly polarised world. In a 1990 interview, the actor Henry Cele who portrayed Shaka kaSenzagakhona in the miniseries Shaka Zulu, said how important it was for him to be able to bring a human Shaka to the screen, not just for South Africa but so that people around the world could see that Black History existed at all.

Cele hit on the fact that history, presented in an entertaining way, was a weapon to be used to fight stereotypes. But even this requires us to engage with a new decolonised or un-colonised view of history, and many are not willing to accept such a view, in a world that is progressing from, rather than leaving behind it’s colonial past.

I once gave two visitors from the United States a walking tour of London and its major museums. At the top of our agenda was The British Museum, so that we could, in the words of one of the visitors, ‘see the loot.’ With no shortage of appropriate exhibits, I felt it was important for them to see one of the most infamous and controversial collections, housed in the Sainsbury Africa Gallery – the Benin Bronzes.

Although it is low hanging fruit, I never fail to make as many loot and plunder jokes as possible whenever I go to the museum. Guilty as I am of repeating Michael B Jordan’s eminently quotable line from Black Panther for entertainment, I make these quips because there is truth to them.

When I mentioned that Nigeria’s economy suffered because these valuable objects had to be studied and visited in London rather than Abuja or Lagos, my guest responded by saying that no one would go to Nigeria because it was a, ‘s*#@t hole.’ Disagree as I might on multiple levels, I had a suspicion that he had very little with which to back up this opinion. Upon probing this attitude, I found that as I suspected, the otherwise well-travelled gentleman had, like myself, never been to Nigeria and had no foundation for the claim beyond second-hand knowledge and common perceptions.

His remark has stayed with me because it is far from unusual for conservative people over a certain age in the United States and the UK to hold to ideas inspired by the endless cycle of well-intentioned but dispiriting charity commercials begging for middle class Euro-American people to donate and save starving orphans, or build their wells. Such people use this sort of information to contrast, compare and confirm myths dressed up as news, like White Genocide in South Africa,

Pepera’s, Motherland takes up the challenge to oppose these stereotypes and does so from a position of power, rather than victimhood, highlighting positive and influential aspects of African history and culture for an audience that desperately needs good places to start.

African history is a challenge to the way some people view the world, because to give Africa a history of its own, with its own voice before 1945 is to give it a dignity that many cannot accept. The idea of Africa being a place with no history would have almost perfectly matched the opinion of the infamous Samuel Long who appears in the closing chapters of, Motherland.

The Wrong Kind of Books.

If you read, Binyavanga Wainaina’s essay, How to Write About Africa you will see where allot of those ideas you thought made you progressive, where actually learned by absorbing work written by what he called ‘Celebrity Activists and aid workers, conservationists … Africa’s most important people …’

Wainaina’s essay stopped short of including, historians and journalists though he almost certainly had them in his sights when he wrote his critique. For Wainaina, these people saw Africa as either a Safari Park, a documentary about genocide or dictators or a Charity commercial. To such minds, the 54 countries of Africa have had no collective or individual history before 1945. They only have news.

In Allan Moorhead’s 1922 book, The Blue Nile, when writing about the background to the British invasion of the Kingdom of Abyssinia (Ethiopia and Eritrea) Moorhead confidently asserted that nothing had happened there between 1771 and 1855. The reason? James Bruce, supposedly the only European in the country, had left in 1771. For, Moorhead, not a single scribe had written a word in Ge’ez regarding history for almost a century since Bruce left.

Books like this, which still represent the bulk of popular African historiography in English, and which informed entire generations of thinkers and writers are class – A examples of the wrong kind of books.

Pepera approached his task intent on presenting African history in a more positive way. As the author points out, doing this is not only an injustice but it is historical garbage because it reduces the available spectrum of study to only the last 3-400 years.

Europeans and Americans focus on the early modern and modern periods to define their history. This was a time of great growth and progress for Europe, and as such allows them to legitimately rely on increasing amounts of contemporary European language sources, many of which attempted to argue for the inferiority of the people and cultures of Africa.

There is no coincidence in the fact that this period is also the most convenient for authors, and casual observers, to compare Africa with Europe or America. As it was in those critical centuries that the nations across the Atlantic and north of the Mediterranean finally pulled ahead in technology and wealth from the rest of the world.

Pepera does not limit himself to such a selective study, nor does he look at the continent from outside, but instead goes in a different direction. For, in fact, Africa does not need to be given a history. It already has one, and not just a history of foreigners in Africa either.

Rap Battles in Print

When James Baldwin finished his speech at the Cambridge student union and took his seat, the entire assembly, led by the president, all of whom had maintained a congregation-like silence throughout, not only applauded vociferously, but rose unanimously in a mark of approval. The drawl of the unseen television presenter remarked, that he had never been witness such a spectacle before. The ovation lasted a full minute, and brought Baldwin, whose nuanced view of white support never saw him play into considerations of realpolitik, back to his feet to acknowledge the acclaim with some surprise.

When the applause died away the president introduced William F. Buckley, a white American conservative writer and intellectual from New York who with an equally exceptional vocabulary, but without an ounce of Baldwin’s ability to use it, launched into his challenge of the question under consideration.

Buckley’s approach was the antithesis of Baldwin’s. Whereas Baldwin had illustrated, Buckley lectured and where Baldwin had been inspiring, Buckley was perverse.

Even if Buckley had not made himself instantly unlikeable to the audience by making a personal remark about Baldwin’s accent, and this within minutes of opening his mouth, his manner and argument were of such an odious and almost comically villainous tone, that the crowd actively began to opposed him during the course of his address. When Buckley yielded the floor, the applause was restrained and not one person stood. The vote on the question returned an almost 2-1 majority for Baldwin.

It so happened that this debate was on my mind as I arrived at the part in Motherland where, Pepepra traced the origins of Rap and told the story of the first rap battle. One of the many unexpected and original ways the author uses non-traditional academic sources to illustrate his point. It occurred to me that in his way, by writing this book, the author is himself engaging in something similar, clapping back against the weight of dismissive or wilfully ignorant works and mindsets that feel a need to keep African history and stories where they have lain since Baldwin’s schooldays. The concept of self, place and identity for whole sections of Western Society lie directly on the concept of an inherited superiority, and they must oppose voices that challenge it.

In some ways too, Motherland, and books like it, engage in something of a rap-battle with the historiography of the past. There has never been a more important time for a clearer, and truer understanding of the Nations of Africa than today. Nor has there been a more important time to listen to African voices, be they from inside the continent, or the diaspora.

Identity

Pepera’s book is not just about history it is about identity. It highlights threads of common cultural experience and practice from across the continent that unite to give a sense of something uniquely African, and connects this to the fabric of modern life for people around the world. Many of the things we take for granted today have roots or origins in the continent, which scientifically speaking is the origin place for human life. Music, art, storytelling, belief and belonging, all have much more diverse origins and facets than we might think. In so bringing this to light, the author utilised many sources, some were academic but he did not restrict himself only to what universities would accept as evidence. Oral and material history, the stories and legends passed down for generations, and the artefacts, objects and structures that have been left behind all have something to add.

Luke Pepera, author of Motherland.

Identity is crucial to many of the biggest arguments in today’s society. In terms of diaspora, migration, forced migration and emigration, the identity of the person, or group that is in question drives the discussion. If western society can get beyond stereotypes, and stop treating foreign nations as inherently dangerous or as charity projects, there is hope, and there is allot of hope and guidance to be found in this book.

Luke Pepera’s Motherland, is one of a rising number of books, such as Zeynab Badawi’s African History of Africa, that will eventually replace those insufficient and defamatory tomes that have for too long be accepted or tolerated on our bookshelves. It throws out the idea, fostered by those books, that the nations of Africa exist in an inherently bad place that we glimpse from our sofas and try to ignore during commercial breaks. It boldly takes up the challenge set by these same forces, and shows us that Africa’s history and its many cultures are as old and diverse as any in the world, all of which deserve respect.

Motherland is one of those books that unlocks corners of your mind. It opens up byways and connections you hadn’t noticed before and allows you to think about how things interact and inform at a deeper level. Reading this book took me on a journey, and as I sat down to write this review, influences from James Baldwin to Binyavanga Wainaina and other connections flew to me and made it more like an essay than a review.

If you have read this far, I suppose that can’t have been a bad thing.

Josh.

Find the Historyland interview with Luke Pepera here https://youtu.be/NtNnrftE18U

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Book Review: The Shortest History of Japan by Lesley Downer

“memorable, meaningful and engaging”

One of Akira Kurosawa’s most famous movies is called Rashōmon, but few Western people who first encounter the movie will understand the significance of the name. At first glance, it seems to have nothing to do with the movie, as it is a story told by a small group of outcasts gathered at an old ruined gate. Although famous for his westward gaze, Kurosawa probably appealed to the knowledge of his Japanese audience to appreciate the significance of the subplot here.

As you will learn from reading The Shortest History of Japan, the name of this gate is Rashōmon, one of the principal entrances of the fabulous city of Heian-kyō, the Capital of Heian period Japan, which fell into ruin and became a place where people dumped corpses and left unwanted babies.

Now, of course, you don’t need to know this to enjoy Toshiro Mifune’s performance, but when you do, it adds significance to those outcasts who are telling the story. This nugget of significance is one of the many such rewards of reading The Shortest History of Japan, by Lesley Downer.

Today, Japan’s popular culture is ever present in Europe and America, and whether in food or art, the West is a major consumer of Japanese exports. Sometimes I often wonder if the average animé or culture watcher could tell you what Ukiyo-e is or if the average foodie could give some insight into the importance of rice to the Japanese economy for the majority of its history.

There is a danger in this, as the more widespread something becomes, the more it can become misunderstood.

The roadblock to understanding is interest, as such the fewer obstacles to deterring that interest is vital. Japanese history can be daunting to people who already lead busy lives as well as the size, detail, accessibility, and often high scholarly tone of most histories of Japan.

A country with the lineage of Japan is not easy to condense, but as the Edo period Haiku master, Bashō would no doubt tell you, just because a work is short, does not mean it cannot carry the same weight

… ‘watersplash’.

If you didn’t understand that reference, reading this book will enlighten you.

Much is down to quality, and this little book delivers a lot within a short space of time. It is not just a retelling of the high points of popular history either. A real effort to weave in significant but often obscure stories has been made. This is important as many readers tend to focus on specific historical periods and don’t get the chance to learn about things that came before or after. For instance, it might interest people to know that, although traditionally thought of as a country in which political power was (and remains) the preserve of men, four of the most important rulers who took Japan from a backwater known as the Land of Dwarves to the Land of the Rising Sun, were women. Significant but less-told and less accessible stories like these, are the bedrock of this book.

Therefore, books like Shortest History are vital to many students and history fans in the understanding of their favoured part in history as a whole. There can be no doubt that in condensing a topic that has libraries devoted to each chapter some things have been omitted or left emphasized, but a book like this cannot be judged on what it leaves out, nor should anyone forget that the author created this book to be an introduction, and a starting point. Yet, even if it is the only book you read about Japan you will reach the end in a better place than when you started, and you may rest assured you have travelled in capable hands.

From the dim origins of prehistory and then through the realm of myth, to the dawn of the samurai and into the modern age, the book flows smoothly and easily through the textured history of the country, revealing little-known figures and facts and always remaining close to the heart of the matter.

With her literary and historical experience, Lesley Downer is the perfect author to bring us The Shortest History of Japan, she conveys the central stories of Japan’s succession of eras with great atmosphere and detail, so whether you need a place to start, or want to cram on the flight to Tokyo, this, memorable, meaningful and engaging book is for you.

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Book Review: King of all Balloons by Mark J. Davies.

ISBN: 9781445682860
Paperback
336 pages
30 Images.
https://www.amberley-books.com/king-of-all-balloons-9781445682860.html

I once followed an air balloon. It wasn’t hard to keep up with, and indeed I even got so close that I could read the name “Virgin” written on the red sign on the basket. It wasn’t hard at all, because it was driving along a curving A-road in England, quite secured to the ground, and I was in a car behind it. 

As it drove along, I wondered if Richard Branson would ever use it to trick some small village into thinking aliens had landed or something. Balloons are fantastic things, quite out of the everyday they were once the the technological innovention of the century. Capable to some minds of doing anything. In modern times we ponder on the power of technology, of spy satellites and rockets and super weapons. In the past it was once pondered, half in jest perhaps, that Napoleon might send an armada of air balloons to invade Britain. The men (and women) who flew in them were not so far removed in their contemporaries eyes from how we view today’s astronauts.

They were called Aeronauts, contemporaries called them Ærostratists, most people called them insane. At a time when the speed of a ship and the speed of a horse were the fastest modes of transport around, a device as precarious as a basket connected to a balloon could propel a body vertically at speeds of 84mph. 

Today a hot air ballon is a quaint thing to do on a more than adventurous holiday, or if you are wildly romantic, a place to propose to your girlfriend. Either way though it’s still considered a bit bonkers, but in the late 18th century it’s not overreaching to say that the first balloonists were essentially the first astronauts.

Apart from the upper atmosphere, there isn’t a physical barrier or wall between sky and space. Anyone interested in spaceflight therefore should be interested in Davies’ biography of one of the pioneers of flight. It’s quite apt indeed that this method of aeronautics should come into its own at around the same time as the first rockets were being adopted by the army. 

Put the two endeavours of ballooning and rocketry together and you have the two elements necessary to open the way to Space. This is why stories like that of James Sadler resonate in the “Satellite Age”, not least because we get to see what an 18th century mind considered as space age technology.

Davies’ life of Sadler, the pioneering British Aeronaut, is a deeply researched biography that explores not only his glamorous and dangerous ascents, but his work in the field of arms manufacture, and his personal life, bringing this neglected man, who will easily become one of the most unusual people you’ll probably read about for a while, back into the spotlight and like all good biographies it puts a spotlight on the times in which he lived as well.

For those wishing to read something different, or those interested in flight and the wider history of the exploration of the upper atmosphere, you couldn’t do much better than picking this book up and learning about the King of all Balloons.

Josh.

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Book Review: Trapdoor Springfield by John Langeller.

  • Author: John Langellier
  • Illustrator: Steve Noon, Alan Gilliland
  • Short code: WPN 62
  • Publication Date: 28 Jun 2018
  • Number of Pages: 80

https://ospreypublishing.com/the-trapdoor-springfield

This was a weapon of great longevity, if Winchester’s and Colt’s won the West, then the Springfield policed it. It is no coincidence that in the movies, it is always the Springfield armed cavalry that rides in at the end to save the day. 

As usual with the weapon series, the various incarnations of the subject weapon is gone over, including the development of the technology and basic stats. The most important type of trapdoor was what was knows as the Allin, but trapdoor technology was a versatile thing, the significant thing about the trapdoor Springfield is that it’s popularity with the army stemmed as much from practicalities as its effectiveness. 

With so many surplus weapons left over from the civil war, a way had to be found to make use of them. By applying trapdoor breechloading technology to many percussion Springfield’s, a new weapon, musket and carbine, was invented and became the staple weapon of the US army for the rest of the 19th century.

It changed and improved of course, with the 1873 pattern and different experiments that got tried out through the decades leading up to the replacement of the trapdoors with magazine rifles and carbines at the end of the century. And all of this is quite thoroughly covered.

Within this book we are given a run down of, Red Cloud’s war, focusing on the Fetterman ‘massacre’ and the Wagon Box fight. The Great Sioux War, giving interesting insight on Little Bighorn. Specifically that historians have in the past been quick to blame the tools rather than the men. The author here indicating that there is reason to believe that the cavalry might have been rather poor shots. The Red river, Nez Perce, Bannock, Ute and Apache Wars are also included, not to forget the infamous Ghost Dance ‘War’. 

The survey of the wars in which the weapons were used ends with the Spanish American and Philippine Wars. These sections don’t focus terribly on how the weapon was used or its effectiveness in the actions listed, except for Little Bighorn, but do give an idea of how widespread and how long it was used for by the US Army.

When turning to the various ways the weapon was experimented with we find various ingenious and odd things. For instance when it comes to details of Bayonets, the curious trowel bayonet is perhaps one of the more interesting. As improved range and accuracy seemed to indicate the end of hand to hand combat, yet military thinkers were loath to ditch the symbolically powerful bayonet, and so with the rise of entrenched warfare, what better way to resolve the problem than to stick a trowel on the end of the rifle?

An examination of army marksmanship the author once more argues that the weapons were not faulty, the users were. The reason hostile tribes were hard to hit wasn’t only that they were expert at concealment and horsemanship, it was the fact the army didn’t pay enough attention to good shooting practice. The Little Bighorn accusation of poor tools is directly challenged again, as the oft reported fault of jamming could happen at any battle.

Examining how this weapon originated from the need to utilise surplus, became surplus and ended up as a staple prop in Hollywood westerns, is a pleasing arc for the book.

And so we come to the artwork. Cutaways and photographs of many weapons help explain the text, especially interesting are the period photos, and the image of an American Indian trapdoor rifle. Steve Noon has managed to bring a cinematic presence to his scenes. The Wagon Box fight is full of movement and detail, deeply layered as always. The Little Bighorn painting is masterly in its psychological look at the army skirmish line under Reno hurrying forwards and opening fire on the tribes. 

 

See you again for another adventure in historyland,

Josh

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Book Review: The Crossbow by Mike Loades.

Author: Mike Loades
Illustrator: Peter Dennis
Short code: WPN 61
Publication Date: 9 Mar 2018
Number of Pages: 80

https://ospreypublishing.com/the-crossbow

Osprey’s Weapon’s series has some excellent titles, and allows a specific kind of author a valuable chance to investigate the nuts and bolts of military hardware. Mike Loades is a perfect writer for this series due to his practical experience, dedicated research, open mindedness and engaging style. As the author points out at the beginning, the crossbow has a strangely bad reputation, especially in England. Seen as the weapon of villains and foreigners, and scoffed at when compared to the longbow, this weapon is undeserving of the scorn heaped upon it. When your humble reviewing servant opined, one indulgent evening, in a tweet that noted the expertise of crossbow companies as opposed to those of the longbow, he was met by quite a bunctious barrage of indignant replies.
Nevertheless I maintain that professional crossbowmen, or arbalists as those of the fraternity are called, were on the whole better drilled and more professional than their archer counterparts, at least at first. The synchronicity required to orchestrate the continual massed discharge of a lateral firing weapon and it’s accompanying pavises in battle necessitated the expertise of crossbow armed troops, hence they were perfect mercenaries and ‘scientifically minded’ soldiers. They also represent an overlooked factor of warfare in the Middle Ages. All too often people imagine a frenzied melee, but the presence of a machine like a crossbow and the inherent necessity to protect their practitioners shows us the much neglected combined arms nature of 12th and 13th century medieval armies. This seems borne out by the Chinese, who left us the only actual written evidence of the complexity of crossbow tactics, and happily this is covered in Loades’ book, identifying how it could dominate the battlefield in a number of ways.
It was not a super-weapon, as many tend to argue as overcompensation for its bad press, but it checked the boxes of what makes a weapon useful and popular, simplicity, portability, ruggedness and maintainability. Loades delves into the science, construction and attributes of the weapon and explores its role and effectiveness, in China, the Middle East and Western Europe.
Not being an archer myself I couldn’t say wether all the talking points are covered in the examination of what makes a crossbow, but it seems thorough to me. I enjoyed the analysis of its combat use, especially how it could form only a part of a professional soldier’s arsenal of talents. Being able to shoot a crossbow and work with others looked good on ye olde CV.
It is commonly thought that both the church and the nobility shunned crossbows, and while it is partially true the papacy tried to prevent all bowmen from shooting fellow Christians, it’s hardly true that the crossbow was despised by medieval commanders. Much like the later musket, the bow, and especially the crossbow (because it’s construction allowed for a greater amount of technical intricacy and artistic embellishment) was a prized weapon for the nobility to master. It was of course rare to see them employ it on the battlefield, and it was most commonly to be seen as a sporting weapon in the upper echelons of society, however in saying that let us not forget that it was with crossbow in hand that Richard the Lionheart waded ashore to relieve Jaffa, and the bolts of his mercenaries that he beat off Saladin’s horse-archers in the ensuing battle. Loades does not omit the factor of crossbow culture here, when he examines the importance and influence of crossbow societies and guilds which were remarkably egalitarian in their membership requirements.
A wealth of practical and experimental knowledge is brought to this work, from shooting the bow mounted, to the tricky procedure of using it in a turret at targets below you, and by the end the reader should find themselves in the enviable position of those who are inspired to learn more. Peter Dennis does duty for the main illustrations here, delivering an engaging scene of the Battle at Jaffa and some typically exciting siege scenes. There are also as many excellent photographs of the weapons themselves as anyone could wish.
The demise of the crossbow, ironically seems to have been its expense. Though at first the ease with which the weapon could be mastered made it popular, the upkeep of professional companies would prove more damaging to a purse than the trickier and more labour intensive longbow, at least in Britain. Although both stringed weapons superseded by the gun, so long as Mike Loades has anything to say about it, neither will be considered inferior to them.

Josh.

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Book Review: Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell.

When a writer chooses as their lead protagonist an actor and his main theme the theatre, possibilities abound. At first looking at Bernard Cornwell’s new novel “Fools and Mortals” you might dissapointedly think, oh, the creator of Sharpe has finally succumbed to the Tudor period eh? And oh look! He’s writing about Shakespeare, how original. Perhaps it was only a matter of time. But don’t be fooled, as we mortals often are, this is a story of layer and depth. Continue reading “Book Review: Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell.”

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Book Review: Viking Warrior vs Anglo-Saxon Warrior by Gareth Williams

Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Osprey Publishing (24 Aug. 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1472818326
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Viking-Warrior-Anglo-Saxon-England-865-1066/dp/1472818326

The Viking Age has often been called the time when England was made. These Scandinavian intruders, who were only one in a line of successive invaders since the Celtic Migration and which included the Saxons, succeeded for a short time in replacing the then current owners of the land and left an indelible mark on, not just England but practically every nation in the British Isles.

This was a time period dominated in military terms by the shield-wall, made up of men, for the most part, armoured with hauberks, shields, swords, spears and axes. Because of the legendary exploits of the Vikings as bloodthirsty pagan looters, and the fame of the saga of 1066, this is a very recognisable time in the history of Northern Europe. Bernard Cornwell had added his popular touch to the history of the subject by writing the Last Kingdom series, which deals with the emergence of the Saxon kingdoms, so it’s safe to say this is a subject dear to many people’s hearts.

This is a well constructed overview of some key battles, and a neat survey of weaponry and organisation, accompanied by some fine photographs and action packed original artwork, however it doesn’t quite deliver the “boots on the ground” experience that other titles in the series provide. Also lacking here is the progression seen in other Versus books. We don’t see much in the way of an evolution in fighting styles.

This was always going to be a tough subject. Unlike later medieval eras there is a scarcity of sources that can reconstruct the use of shield, spear, sword, axe and seax. However experimental archeology does allows us to theorise as to their most logical applications, Mike Loades for instance has presented some highly interesting theories on the subject in his series Weapons that Made Britain.

Interestingly what the author is doing is showing us how alike the Vikings and Saxons were in their approach to warfare. How elements of each other’s military ethos and technology was harnessed. Rather than their differences this book observes two remarkably similar tactical doctrines. Instead of the front lines the author covers grand strategy, campaign goals and possible interpretations for the course of the Battle of Ashdown, the Battle of Maldon and the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

As mentioned above a paucity of written works restricts the scope of the book. Whereas in other Versus books it is possible to observe the experiences of “voices from the ranks” the sparse sources to be found for these centuries of warfare makes even the detailed reconstruction of major battles a challenge. More perhaps could have been done to attempt to flesh out the way warfare was conducted and a greater discussion of possible and theoretical tactics could have been mounted. There is for instance three diagrams that illustrate shield-wall tactics. However the relative complexity of the formation isn’t mentioned even though there is a discussion to be had about the old fashioned idea of the walls, which show simplistic arrays of men standing shoulder to shoulder, and the newer interpretations which show a highly organised system of projecting spears and in places, stacked shields that have a distinctly Roman or Greek flavour.

Peter Dennis provides mad melee’s, and an interesting interpretation of the famous incident at Stamford Bridge, in which the famous axe-man, often called a berserker, is killed while delaying the Saxon pursuit, not by a spear between the legs, but by a javelin hurled from the riverbank. His lone figure studies are excellent detailed, and it’s always satisfying to see the Seax dangling within easy reach.

All in all, this is a good overview of early medieval warfare in Northern Europe and its broad dynamics, but presents only a limited view of the ways in which battles were fought in terms of nuts and bolts combat.

Josh.