This is one of the most valuable books in the armoury of the serious student of British Military history. It is a new and revised edition of Arthur White's much sought-after bibliography of regimental, battalion and other histories of all regiments and Corps that have ever existed in the British Army. This new edition includes an enlarged addendum to that given in the 1988 reprint. It is, quite simply, indispensible.

The Royal Welch Fusiliers were present at all Marlborough's great victories; they were one of the six Minden regiments; they fought throughout the Peninsula and were present at Wellington's final glorious victory at Waterloo. In The Great War their officers included the writer poets Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves; their 22 battalions fought not just on the Western Front but at Gallipoli, in Egypt, Palestine, Salonika, Mesopotamia and Italy. In WW2 they won battle honours from the Reichswald to Kohima. More recently they have served with distinction in the war against terror in the Middle East. Like so many famous regiments the RWF are no longer in the British Army's order of battle having been amalgamated into the Royal Regiment of Wales. But this fine book is the lasting memorial to a fiercely proud and greatly admired regiment.

Drummer Richard Bentinck of the 23rd of Foot (Royal Welch Fusiliers) was a rarity: he survived many sanguinary experiences and recorded his adventures. His writings provide an evocative portrait of an ordinary soldier’s perception of living with one of the most experienced Napoleonic infantry battalions. He was discharged in 1823 for ill health, but lived a full life, dying in 1878 as an old man. Jonathan Crook has meticulously researched his ancestor’s life, finding unpublished first-hand accounts from Bentinck of desperate conflict across the globe, from Copenhagen to Martinique, throughout the Peninsular Campaign and culminating at the battle of Waterloo. These accounts are drawn from interviews that Bentinck conducted with a journalist just before his death. The title of the book is taken from the Battle of Aldea de Ponte: Wellington identified a tactical vulnerability and called for infantry to conduct an immediate manoeuvre. On being informed that the 23rd of Foot was best disposed, he smiled and said, ‘Ah, the very thing,’ demonstrative of his hard-earned confidence.

‘I never saw any regiment in such order,’ said Wellington before the Battle of Waterloo, ‘it was the most complete and handsome military body I ever looked at.’ The object of the Duke's admiration was the 23rd Regiment of Foot – the famous Royal Welch Fusiliers – and this is their story during the tumultuous and bloody period of the wars with France between 1793 and 1815. Based on rare personal memoirs and correspondence and new research, this compelling book offers fresh insight into the evolution of the British Army. Scorned by even its own countrymen in 1793, it was transformed within a generation into a professional force that triumphed over the greatest general and army of the time. The men of the Royal Welch Fusiliers come alive as Graves tracks them across three continents, joining them in major battles and minor skirmishes, surviving shipwrecks and disease. We come to know such fighting men as the intrepid Drummer Richard Bentinck, the eccentric Major Jack Hill, and their beloved commander, Lt-Col. Harvey Ellis, who led his Fusiliers in some of the most famous actions only to fall at the greatest of them all – Waterloo. This is a book that will appeal to all those interested in the Napoleonic wars, contemporary tactics and the meaning and the cost of courage.

Paul Revere's midnight ride looms as an almost mythical event in American history--yet it has been largely ignored by scholars and left to patriotic writers and debunkers. Now one of the foremost American historians offers the first serious look at the events of the night of April 18, 1775--what led up to it, what really happened, and what followed--uncovering a truth far more remarkable than the myths of tradition. In Paul Revere's Ride, David Hackett Fischer fashions an exciting narrative that offers deep insight into the outbreak of revolution and the emergence of the American republic. Beginning in the years before the eruption of war, Fischer illuminates the figure of Paul Revere, a man far more complex than the simple artisan and messenger of tradition. Revere ranged widely through the complex world of Boston's revolutionary movement--from organizing local mechanics to mingling with the likes of John Hancock and Samuel Adams. When the fateful night arrived, more than sixty men and women joined him on his task of alarm--an operation Revere himself helped to organize and set in motion. Fischer recreates Revere's capture that night, showing how it had an important impact on the events that followed. He had an uncanny gift for being at the center of events, and the author follows him to Lexington Green--setting the stage for a fresh interpretation of the battle that began the war. Drawing on intensive new research, Fischer reveals a clash very different from both patriotic and iconoclastic myths. The local militia were elaborately organized and intelligently led, in a manner that had deep roots in New England. On the morning of April 19, they fought in fixed positions and close formation, twice breaking the British regulars. In the afternoon, the American officers switched tactics, forging a ring of fire around the retreating enemy which they maintained for several hours--an extraordinary feat of combat leadership. In the days that followed, Paul Revere led a new battle-- for public opinion--which proved even more decisive than the fighting itself. ] When the alarm-riders of April 18 took to the streets, they did not cry, "the British are coming," for most of them still believed they were British. Within a day, many began to think differently. For George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, the news of Lexington was their revolutionary Rubicon. Paul Revere's Ride returns Paul Revere to center stage in these critical events, capturing both the drama and the underlying developments in a triumphant return to narrative history at its finest.