After the First World War, how many thousands of British families would have proud or bitter reason to remember the name St Quentin? At least eight Divisions, 23 Brigades, 74 Battalions an enormous number of fighting men, a weight of experience, courage, defeat and victory, all to be traced through these fields and villages round the city. There is much to honour here: exhausted British troops marching south in the Retreat from Mons in August 1914, resistance attacks on the Hindenburg Line in 1917, desperate feats of arms in the final German onslaught in the Spring of 1918. Many impressive individual and collective achievements, captured guns, Victoria Crosses richly earned. The ancient city itself suffered too - bombardment by French and British artillery, its citizens subjected and exploited by the occupying German forces, then evacuated ahead of the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line - before its final liberation in October 1918. The book gives details of positions, redoubts, attacks, lines of advance and retreat, with many illustrations provided from local sources. Most of the positions described can still be traced and the sites of some epic events located.

After the First World War, how many thousands of British families would have proud or bitter reason to remember the name St Quentin? At least eight Divisions, 23 Brigades, 74 Battalions an enormous number of fighting men, a weight of experience, courage, defeat and victory, all to be traced through these fields and villages round the city. There is much to honour here: exhausted British troops marching south in the Retreat from Mons in August 1914, resistance attacks on the Hindenburg Line in 1917, desperate feats of arms in the final German onslaught in the Spring of 1918. Many impressive individual and collective achievements, captured guns, Victoria Crosses richly earned. The ancient city itself suffered too - bombardment by French and British artillery, its citizens subjected and exploited by the occupying German forces, then evacuated ahead of the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line - before its final liberation in October 1918. The book gives details of positions, redoubts, attacks, lines of advance and retreat, with many illustrations provided from local sources. Most of the positions described can still be traced and the sites of some epic events located.

The author's imagination is matched by his language, so presenting the unwary reader with difficulties, which the author notes and discusses throughout, defining and explaining the many poetic metres and prose embellishments used, and identifying the sources of numerous borrowings; he also re-examines and collates the manuscripts and printed versions of the text, and considers the most recent scholarship in the field.

"When Dudo of Saint-Quentin's Historia Normannorum first appeared in or around 1015, written for the then Duke of Normandy, Richard II, Dudo created a text without precedent. By committing the lives and deeds of Richard II's ancestors to written memory for the first time since the foundation of Normandy under the Viking Rollo in 911, Dudo provided the Norman court at Rouen with both an official dynastic historiography and a treasured record of their collective past. The Historia Normannorum was conceived, from the outset, as an idiosyncratic text which purported to be both staunchly traditional and remarkably innovative. By means of a pioneering transdisciplinary combination of Historical Studies, Manuscript Studies, Literary Theory and Cultural Memory Studies, this book explores medieval historiography through a unique and highly innovative lens. The analysis showcases the Historia Normannorum's status as one of the most formative historical narratives of the Middle Ages, one which may even provide the earliest surviving example of an illustrated chronicle from the entire Latin West."--Back cover.

Beaten Down by Blood: The Battle of Mont St Quentin-Peronne 1918 charts an extraordinary journey from the trenches facing Mont St Quentin on 31 August 1918 through the frenetic phases of the battle until the final objectives are taken on 5 September. This is the story, oftentold in the words of the men themselves, of the capture of the 'unattackable' Mont and the 'invincible' fortress town of Peronne, two of the great feats of Australian forces in the First World War. The Author places real men on the battlefield, describing their fears and their courage and their often violent deaths. The struggle for control of the battle, to site the guns, to bridge the Somme and maintain communications are portrayed in vivid detail. The story also offers a glimpse of the men's families at home, their anxiety and their life-long grief.

From his beginnings as the son of shopkeepers in Flanders through his impoverished days as a student, Spurling traces Matisse's life through his 30s in this thorough and riveting biography. 35 color & 152 b&w illustrations.