The Helion & Co. Military Book Blog

There is a particular challenge in writing the history of intelligence. By its very nature, it resists narrative. It obscures, fragments, and erases itself. Yet, every so often, a figure emerges who forces us to reconsider what we think we know—not through grand proclamations, but through quiet, sustained influence. Codename: Grand Duchess is one such work.

By James O’Neill

Now that The Nine Years War, 1593-1603: The turning point at Kinsale 1598-1603 is out, I can’t stop myself addressing one of the bugbears that has plagued the history of their conflict: guerrilla war.  I have been researching this particular conflict for well over twenty years (on and off, I have a life, for God’s sake). As I...

By Andrew Young

In studies of British amphibious warfare, practice has long tended to outrun theory. The landings, descents, sieges, and raids of the long eighteenth century are well documented, yet the conceptual frameworks through which contemporaries attempted to understand and systematise these operations have often been treated as an afterthought. Chapter 5 of Bri...

By Mark Shearwood William III Landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688 by Jan Wyck, 1688.

The events of November 1688 have been given numerous names from Bloodless Revolution, the English Revolution, the Extraordinary Revolution, a Famous Revolution, the Great Revolution, the Peaceful Revolution, the Sensible Revolution, a Stupendous Revolution and even as the Bourge...