Allan Mallinson - The Making of the British Army: From the English Civil War to the War on Terror

Allan Mallinson

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First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers

This updated edition published in Great Britain in 2010 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright Allan Mallinson 2009, 2010

Allan Mallinson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9780593064306

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To
SUE
a soldiers wife who followed the drum
and
from German lodgings or Roman villa
made a home

And in gratitude to
Sir John Keegan,
who taught a great many of us their history

Reviews for
The Making Of The British Army

A romantic history of the British Army that stirs the blood.
Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph

An important book, because it shows how history has not just shaped the Army, its traditions and its ethos, but also how it has formed British strategy, for better and for worse.
Antony Beevor, The Times

Lucid, absorbing Mallinson combines a professionals feel for his subject with a populist touch.
Christopher Sylvester, Daily Express

Fascinating clear and concise important. It is hard to see this book being bettered in the near future.
Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph

A compelling history of the British Army.
Emmanuelle Smith, FT

Thought-provoking and endlessly entertaining.
Trevor Royal, The Herald (Scotland)

Whether he is unpicking the close stitching of a battle or lyricising the hero of the book, the common soldier, his touch and judgment are compelling.
David Edelsten, The Field

Mallinson is surely right to stress the one enduring quality of the British Army: operational resilience.
Saul David, Spectator

An admirable introduction to an always controversial subject.
M R D Foot, Literary Review

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All civilizations owe their origins to the warrior; their cultures nurture the warriors who defend them, and the differences between them will make those of one very different in externals from those of another.

Sir John Keegan, A History of Warfare

I came to write this book first and foremost as a soldier of thirty-five years. How and why my army had become what it was extraordinarily capable in spite of its small size occupied me more and more. A soldier lives daily with his heritage the uniforms, the pictures on the walls, the names of things, how people talk, what they do, and how they do it; never more so than on operations. And when you live with your history day in, day out, for thirty-five years you begin to see it in a different way from what is sometimes written in the history books, for certain things gain in significance, while others become mere noise. So I began jobbing back into history to try to understand what it was in our past that made us tick today. And when I made a link in the past I found that it immediately demanded I reach back even further, for there was never the equivalent of a military big bang when suddenly the elements of the army were created. Indeed, even in the mists of the Dark Ages there are things that resonate in the modern army. Certainly I cannot believe that, say, Alfreds victory over the Danes at Ethandune on the downs overlooking the present-day battle-training area of Salisbury Plain is entirely unconnected with the spirit of that training.

So where to begin the story of the making of the British army? The Anglo-Saxon fyrd was a levy of free farmers assembled for a definite and short period, for the crops had to be sown and the harvest gathered. The Vikings with whom they battled were no better trained, however. The Normans were altogether better organized, but a single Roman legion would have routed William at Hastings, as it would any of the medieval peasant armies that fought in the Wars of the Roses, or the innumerable clan wars north of the border. Henry Vs magnificent longbowmen would have found the Roman testudo hard to crack. And even gunpowder would not have dismayed a legion too much before the end of the sixteenth century, for muskets and artillery were then crude and cumbersome. The point was that Roman soldiers were professionals: the legions trained full-time. For twelve hundred years and more, neither England nor Scotland had a standing army; and without a standing army there could be no continuity. So a study of the British army is therefore best begun at the point from which there is unbroken continuity: the seventeenth century, at the restoration of Charles II to the thrones of England and Scotland, when events at last forced a standing army on the nation.

The next question is what to leave out, which almost every soldier I have spoken to about the book has asked. In a way everything matters, and the army has seen so much action. Conversely, however, it has never been monolithic: what happened in one part of the army, in one regiment perhaps, dramatic though it may have been, did not always change the overall picture. What matters are those people and events in the past that have made the army what it is today an army emerging from a long and bruising campaign in Iraq, and fighting another in Afghanistan. I am not writing