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Welcome to Clash of Steel!


Featured battle : Nive

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 09 December 1813 - 13 December 1813

Wellington's assault on the strong French positions defending Bayonne was successful on the 9th pushing Soult further back towards Bayonne. Hope's corps was within 6 miles of the city by nightfall. The dispositions of the British was disrupted by rivers and ravines, and the nature of the countryside was very broken. Soult concentrated to make two counter attacks on the 10th. Both were held, but only just, by very determined defenders. A final French effort on the 13th faltered after initial gains because Wellington had sorted his internal lines of support, Soult withdrew.

Featured image :

Chesters Roman Fort - Commandants House

Chesters Roman Fort - Commandants House

A close-up of the beautifully preserved hypocaust or under-floor heating supports from the main Commandants house or Praetorium at Chesters. A furnace, tended by a slave, would have been built in the walls with chimneys directing hot air around these pillars which would have supported a stone and perhaps mosaic floor, warming both it and the room. High-status installations like this would have been seen in important villas right across Britain and Roman empire.

Gallery updated : 2022-04-04 08:33:43

Featured review :

The Last British Battleship HMS Vanguard 1946-1960

R A Burt
The last books I reviewed, published by Seaforth, were two volumes on Coastal Forces [see elsewhere on this site] which dealt with the smallest WW2 Naval craft so it is quite a jump to the largest battleship we ever built. Vanguard’s displacement was about 500 MTBs a truly magnificent ship which I know from personal experience having been on board at a Navy Day in Portsmouth in the late 1950s. So my question was is this book as good as the Coastal Forces books and will it do the ship justice?
My hopes were fully realised by the text, the photographs and the technical drawings. The text is very technical in parts which truly reflects the subject but in the main can be easily followed. Although there are a few difficult bits where unexplained initials are use. The photographs are many and varied showing every stage of the ship from builders yard to breakers yard. One very poignant picture, the last in the book, is of the bow section just lying forlorn in the mud.
The technical drawings, nearly all by the author, are superb. The drawings are of the whole ship including two three page and one four page spreads. There are also many detailed drawings of weapons systems, radar etc. All drawings are fully annotated as appropriate to their scale.
All this is presented in a beautifully produced large portrait format, about 260mm X 300mm.
We very highly recommend this well researched work.
Footnote: There is an error in the title as the Royal Navy still has a battleship in commission
i.e. H M S Victory, flying the flag of the Second Sea Lord/C-in-C Naval Home Command.
Seaforth Publishing, 2019

Reviewed : 2019-08-31 14:01:17