In this stimulating and original investigation of the decisive battles of the English Civil War, Malcolm Wanklyn reassesses what actually happened on the battlefield and as a
result sheds new light on the causes of the eventual defeat of Charles I.

Taking each major battle in turn - Edgehill, Newbury I, Cheriton, Marston Moor, Newbury II, Naseby, and Preston - he looks critically at contemporary accounts and at historians' narratives, explores the surviving battlegrounds and retells the story of each battle from a new perspective.

His lucid, closely argued analysis questions traditional assumptions about each battle and the course of the war itself.