History, Medieval, Retrospective
Stuart Gorman
The Battle of Castillon – A Reflection

Today is the anniversary of the battle of Castillion. A year ago today I submitted the final draft of my manuscript for Castillon: The Final Battle of the Hundred Years War to my editor. Now, once again on the anniversary of the battle, my book is out and I thought it would be interesting to write something about the experience of writing it. 

If I’m honest, though, I feel kind of disconnected from the book now. I finished it over a year ago, and while I’ve re-read it in that time as part of proofreading and making the final tweaks to the text, as a project it has felt finished for a long time. In the intervening time I moved to South Korea and started a new job, and I haven’t had much time to think about what that day in 1453 might mean to me still. 

The Battle of Castillon – A Reflection

Book Review

When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History by Matthew Restall (HarperCollins, 2018)

When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History by Matthew Restall (HarperCollins, 2018)

I only very recently began improving my knowledge of the history of Spanish colonisation of the Caribbean and Mexico and must confess to still being quite the novice on the subject. My interest was spurred by intermittent brief references to the use of crossbows by Spanish conquistadors. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more, but I also knew that I couldn’t just dip a toe into the subject. The colonisation of Central and South America is a heavy subject and includes some of the worst genocides in human history. Even if what I was interested in was some niche facts about an old weapon, I couldn’t completely ignore that side of the history.

Matthew Restall has published many books on the Spanish in sixteenth-century America. I had previously read his Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, which is a great introduction to the subject of Spanish colonialism, and I would recommend it to anyone. That was a large part of why I was inclined to pick up When Montezuma Met Cortés, that and a Google Books search indicated that he at least mentioned crossbows a few times so I could be killing two birds with one stone.

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Edmund: In Search of England’s Lost King by Francis Young (I. B. Tauris, 2018).

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Edmund: In Search of England’s Lost King by Francis Young (I. B. Tauris, 2018).

The story of St. Edmund, who was King of East Anglia from around 855 until his death in 869, is a challenging one to tell. We don’t know if he was married or had any children, although later popular belief maintained that he was a virgin throughout his life – a sign of his holiness. We don’t know anything about his parents, although we do know he was a member of the Wuffing dynasty – probably its last. Basically, you could fit the entirety of our knowledge about the life of St. Edmund into a few sentences – given that fact what is this book about and why is it interesting?

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Peacemaking in the Middle Ages: Principles and Practice by Jenny Benham (Manchester University Press, 2010)

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Peacemaking in the Middle Ages: Principles and Practice by Jenny Benham (Manchester University Press, 2010)

Peacemaking in the Middle Ages is a truly phenomenal book, the kind of book that excites me as a historian and fills me with energy for my next project. The title would suggest that this is a very niche book without a wide appeal, but I think that anyone with an interest in medieval history should buy a copy and read it – it’s barely over two hundred pages and the paperback edition retails for a fairly reasonable £25 so you really don’t have an excuse!

Bear with me here, but the structure of this book is an impressive thing to behold. Jenny Benham’s writing is direct and purposeful, it never says more than it has to, and each point is well structured and supported without being didactic or boring. It is a master class in efficient and engaging writing throughout. I wish I could write a book this well. Benham is wading through some fairly dense material and writing about subjects that it would be trivial to make boring, but she avoids getting lost in the weeds and delivers her book in just the length it needs to be. It’s phenomenal.

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Blood Royal: Dynastic Politics in Medieval Europe by Robert Bartlett (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

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Blood Royal: Dynastic Politics in Medieval Europe by Robert Bartlett (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

I was fortunate enough to be in the audience for two of the lectures where Robert Bartlett presented some of the initial drafts of the work that would become Blood Royal. In particular, his discussion of the use of regnal numbering in medieval Europe, from its origins in the papacy to its later adoption by various monarchies, was one of the most interesting talks I’ve ever attended. I’d been looking forward to this book ever since it was implied at the final talk that one would be forthcoming, and while I had to wait quite a while the final product did not disappoint.

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Review: Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons and Dragons by Jon Peterson (MIT Press, 2021)

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Review: Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons and Dragons by Jon Peterson (MIT Press, 2021)

I was a huge fan of Jon Peterson’s earlier book Playing at the World (Unreason Press, 2012) when I read it back in either 2014 or 2015 – I was finishing my PhD and records from that time are hazy at best. I managed to sneak it into my thesis, so I must have read it before August 2015. I also really enjoyed Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana (Ten Speed Press, 2018), which Peterson contributed to. Given this pedigree of past works, I was very excited when I discovered that he was revisiting the subject of the early history of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) in his new book, and I’m happy to report that it did not disappoint.