A Prize, a Gift and a Guest post!

Last month I entered a Blog-comp over on Prometheus in Aspic. Max S. Foy the purveyor of this very interesting blog posed his readers a question. What to name his newly painted 25mm English Civil War artillery piece and why? I had a think and remembered this old fashioned word that I remember reading in one of my Dads history books when I was a kid.

Max liked mine the best so I won! Other entries were Big Mathilde, Sharpe Rejoinder and Apollyon. My entry was Clapperdudgeon, which means, a Chief beggar, and what a better chief beggar (at the time of course?) but King Charlie himself!!!

My prize was copy of “A General Plague of Madness, The Civil Wars in Lancashire 1640-1660” by Stephen Bull.

And what a great looking book it is too!

Preface

“The towns and fields of Lancashire witnessed bloody fighting on and off for almost a decade in the 1640’s. The English Civil Wars found one of their most important battlegrounds right here in the county, as Englishmen (and sometimes Scots) fought desperately over the political future of the nation and the fate of Kings. Neighbours, fathers, sons and friends took up arms against each other, for King or for Parliament. Lancaster was burned, Liverpool was stormed, the people of Bolton were massacred, and every Lancastrian was affected by economic chaos, pillaging, plague, disruption and distress.”

So thank you very much Mr Foy!!!

The second book in the photo above was a prize on Edwin’s blog Thoughts of a Depressed Diplomat, myself and Fran both quite fancied the book and the usual slanging match then ensued, as to who would win the prize, with other bloggers (no names mentioned) also joining the fray. Unfortunately neither me nor Fran won the book in question, The Khyber Rifles, From the British Raj to Al Qaeda, by Jules Stewart.

Part of the Preface

“Jules Stewart tells the incredible story of Colonel Sir Robert Warburton, the man who raised the Khyber Rifles in 1878, and describes the Rifles in action, in particular in the 1847 Frontier uprising and the Third Afghan War.”

A couple of days ago I received an email from Edwin, saying that one of his readers purchased several of the books and wanted to give one to me!!! Fantastic! So a big thank you has to go out to Edwin and my mysterious benefactor, who wants to remain anonymous??

The only trouble is, that git Fran’s also got the same mysterious benefactor, so now I can’t rub his nose in it…..Damn it!

Lastly I was asked to write a few guest posts for the newish blog run by Messrs Hilton and Harrison, the co-authors of Beneath the Lily Banners "The League of Augsberg", My first guest post is up today, so if you fancy reading more about the Grand Alliance, NYW, League of Augsberg to name but three of the names of the period, click the link above. And do join the blog too,especially if your thinking about starting a new period???