Making of the British Army. Allan Mallinson. 2009.

Edgehill, 1642: on a Warwickshire hillside, four thousand men lie dead and wounded.

Oliver Cromwell, commanding a troop of cavalry, rides on to the field in the aftermath of the first battle of the English Civil War.

Surveying the disastrous scene, he realizes that war can no longer be made in the old, feudal way: there has to be system and discipline, and therefore - eventually - a standing professional army.

From the 'New Model Army' of Cromwell's vision, former soldier Allan Mallinson shows us the people and events that have shaped the army we know today. How Marlborough's momentous victory at Blenheim is linked to Wellington's at Waterloo; how the desperate fight at Rorke's Drift in 1879 underpinned the heroism of the airborne forces at Arnhem in 1942; and why Montgomery's momentous victory at El Alamein mattered long after the Second World War was over.

From the Army's origins at the battle of Edgehill to our current contin Afghanistan, this is history at its most relevant - and most dramatic.