One of our most distinguished military historians tells the story of six defining battles .
It lets the narratives - the battles - speak for themselves..
So why were battles fought as they were? What gave them their shape? Why did they go as they did: victory for one side, defeat for the other?In exploring six significant feats of arms - the war and campaign in which they each occurred, and the factors that determined their precise form and course - The Shape of Battle answers these fundamental questions about the waging of war.
Hastings (1066) - everyone knows the date, but not, perhaps, the remarkable strategic background.
Towton (1461) - the bloodiest Battle to be fought on English soil.
Waterloo (1815) - more written about in English than any other but rarely in its true context as the culminating Battle in the longest war in \'modern\' times.
D-Day (1944) - a Battle within a larger operation (\'Overlord\'), and the longest-planned and most complex offensive Battle in history.
Imjin River (1951) - this little known Battle of the Korean War was the British Army\'s last large-scale defensive battle.
Operation Panther\'s Claw (2009) - a Battle that has yet to receive the official distinction of being one: an offensive conducted over six weeks with all the trappings of 21st-century warfare yet whose Shape and face at times resembled the Middle Ages.
The Shape of Battle is not a polemic, it doesn\'t try to argue a case.
Fighting is, after all, an intensely human affair; human nature doesn\'t change.
However, battles across the centuries, whether fought with sticks and stones or advanced technology, have much in common.
Each takes place in a different context - the war, the campaign, the weapons. .
Every Battle is different. .
One of our most distinguished military historians tells the story of six defining battles
