'The most comprehensive narrative of intelligence compiled ... unrivalled' Max Hastings, Sunday Times
'Captivating, insightful and masterly' Edward Lucas, The Times
The history of espionage is far older than any of today's intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The first mention of espionage in world literature is in the Book of Exodus.'God sent out spies into the land of Canaan'. From there, Christopher Andrew traces the shift in the ancient world from divination to what we would recognize as attempts to gather real intelligence in the conduct of military operations, and considers how far ahead of the West - at that time - China and India were. He charts the development of intelligence and security operations and capacity through, amongst others, Renaissance Venice, Elizabethan England, Revolutionary America, Napoleonic France, right up to sophisticated modern activities of which he is the world's best-informed interpreter. What difference have security and intelligence operations made to course of history? Why have they so often forgotten by later practitioners? This fascinating book provides the answers.
Throughout history the English have been a warlike lot. Often we fight among ourselves - there have been a good few civil wares - and when we were not slaughtering each other, we practised on our neighbours, the Scots, the Irish, the French . . . When that got too easy, we set off around the world to find other people to fight. This was usually done with a hubris that invited some ludicrous pratfall.
· Do you know which crazy field marshal told the Duke of Wellington that he had been made pregnant with an elephant by a French grenadier?
· Or which cowardly general hid behind a tree when his troops walked straight into a Spanish ambush?
· Or which regiment drank 7217 gallons of liquor between them?
In The Beastly Battles of Old England, Nigel Cawthorne takes us on a darkly humorous journey through some of our ill-advised military actions. From the war over a severed ear to a general seeking out his rival's mistresses to even the score, it is a miscellany of insufferable arrogance, reckless gallantry, stunning stupidity, massive misjudgements and general beastliness.
