PotCVpouri

 The Yarkshire Gamer has announced the end of the golden age of wargames blogs, although I can't help noticing that he did so via a wargames blog. Rest assured that this blog will continue its proud record of publishing top-notch, wargame-related stuff every single day and often even more frequently. And that, dear readers, is an aspiration rather than a promise.

So, I haven't been here for a while; what's been happening in my life? Not wargaming, that's for sure. I think I mentioned that I had bought a pressure washer. I have been dodging the showers and trying it out. I had never done any jet/pressure/power washing before and was interested to discover that it is a metaphor for life itself: everything is a complete mess and at the end you stand back and ask yourself "Is that all I've achieved?". 

On a brighter note, cultural activities have resumed. In my capacity as a man-about-town I was invited to a reception to mark the reopening of the Tetley Gallery in Leeds city centre, a very pleasant Art Deco building which was formerly the offices for the brewery. The current exhibition is by Mel Brimfield and is entitled "From This World, To That Which Is To Come", a quote from "The Pilgrim's Progress". The artist gave a talk, but as she did so whilst wearing a mask I am unable to tell you what she said. The piece above was singing to me whilst I was taking the photo (N.B. this is very different to the idea of it 'speaking to me', which it most certainly did not) and is, I believe, about the concept that our mental and emotional health would be better if we would only all help one another; amen to that. The best piece was a cartoon which suggested that the Adventures of Tintin were the delusions of a psychiatric in-patient, that Professor Calculus was his doctor, and that Snowy was in fact his pillow rather than his dog. All of which makes more sense than the books. 

I have also been to my first gig in over a year, the great Martin Simpson. I have of course seen him many times before, which I think helped to bridge that gap and make it seem like just another concert. Not so for him, I think. It was his first appearance in a long time and he said that it was impossible for him to express what it meant for him to be on stage again, "reminding myself of who I am" as he put it. He played the usual mix of originals, traditional songs and covers, including songs by: John Prine - sadly lost to Covid last year; Dylan - eighty in a couple of days; and this one from Robb Johnson - my old comrade from days gone by.

The Castle in the War of the Roses

 In his - highly recommended - one volume history of the Wars of the Roses, John Gillingham writes "In the Wars of the Roses there were few sieges and only one of any consequence". Despite titling his book "The Castle in the Wars of the Roses", it is sieges with which Dan Spencer is primarily concerned. And, as seems to be the custom among academics, Dr Spencer does not agree with Professor Gillingham. According to him, he "demonstrates the significant role of siege warfare during the Wars of the Roses". So, which is it? For me, Spencer more than adequately shows that there were actually quite a lot of sieges; he names 36, and makes a persuasive case that there would have been others unrecorded by history. However, it's hard to believe that any of them really made a difference; indeed very few of them lasted beyond a few days. As will all writers on the period the author can only go on what records remain, so the book focuses on what we know about rather than what was necessarily important at the time. I would also suggest that there isn't quite enough material to make a full length book, and that there has been a certain amount of padding out with the general military and political background. Still, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to those with a particular interest in the subject, perhaps not so much to the general reader. 

Dr Spencer gave one of the talks in this winter's online lecture series from the Royal Armouries, on 'The Development of Gunpowder Weapons in Medieval England", which at the time of writing is still available on the Armouries' YouTube channel. (As an aside, if you do watch any of those lectures you need to know that nothing happens until fifteen minutes or so into the video; I have no idea why they don't edit them properly.) The things that stuck in my mind from the lecture - and which has great relevance to my ongoing siege gaming - is him saying that in the 15th century bombards would have to be placed no further than 40 paces from a wall to have a chance of creating a breach.

I can't finish without revisiting the Spofforth solecism. As reported previously, in chapter 1 this castle was incorrectly reported as being in Northumberland. However, in chapter 2 we find the Duke of Exeter and Lord Egremont raising forces in Yorkshire at a place called Spofford; Egremont of course being another of those hot-headed chaps in whom the Percy family specialised. He doesn't make it to chapter 3 - spoiler alert - having been killed at the battle of Northampton. However, he does variously feature in the text as both Egremont and Egremond. Do I detect an homage to Hergé from Dr Spencer?

"If my name's Egremont we won't get to chapter 3." "To be precise, we won't get to chapter 3 if my name's Egremond."