Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars 1638-1651

Now available in paperback, Going to the Wars studies the British Civil War as a military experience. It is not a traditional campaign history, a political history of the war, or an analysis of weapons, organization, supply or tactics. Rather Charles Carlton explains how men prepared for combat, how they fought battles and endured sieges. Others also endured the horrors of war and the book pays special attention to those often excluded from a military panorama: women, children and prisoners of war. Combining extensive research in primary sourses with the work of the new military historians such as John Keegan and Richard Holmes, Carlton provides a fresh look at the event once described by G.M. Trevelyan as the most important happening in British history.