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Decisive Battles of the English Civil War. By Malcolm Wanklyn. Barnsley, U.K.: Pen & Sword Books, 2006. ISBN 1-84415-454-8. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 246. £19.99.
The battles of the English Civil War would appear to be a well-trodden path. Not only are there many sound single-battle studies but good general studies. It therefore says much for Wanklyn's book that he has much that is new to say not only in terms of the battles he has chosen to analyse, Edgehill, Newbury I and II, Gheriton, Marston Moor, Naseby, and Preston, but, more importantly, about the analysis of battles and the sources historians use.
Wanklyn's section on "Recapturing the Past" may tread well-worn ground for academics with regard to the discipline's engagement with post-modernism but he sets this directly within the context of what...