writerlywitterings

When historical novelist Jemahl Evans recommended Michael Jecks’ Fields of Glory, the first in his Hundred Years War series, I knew there was a good chance I was in for a decent read. Moreover, having just launched a mediaeval novel myself (An Argument of Blood, co-written with J.A. Ironside, about the lead up to 1066), I was definitely up for a tale of the long and brutal history of war between England and France that in many ways started with the Norman Conquest of William I.

I was not disappointed. Fields of Glory depicts the campaign under Edward III starting less than a decade into the Hundred Years War, and the lead-up to the Battle of Crécy. This was not a phase of history I had studied in any detail and my prior knowledge went about as far as knowing of the battle and that the young Edward…