Dr Mike Osborne's interest in fortification began with childhood visits to castles and forts. It has developed over the years to include all aspects of the topic from Iron-Age hillforts to Cold War bunkers. He was a volunteer-coordinator for the Defence of Britain Project recording twentieth-century military structures. After a thirty-year-career in education he took early retirement to write, producing twenty-five books to date. Topics include: Civil War sieges and fortifications, drill halls, the Volunteer Training Corps, the best-selling Defending Britain, and a series of county surveys of defences including four titles for Fonthill and the award-winning Defending Cambridgeshire.
Description
Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; Chapter 1 Fortifications in Gloucestershire prior to the Norman Conquest; Chapter 2 Gloucestershire in the Middle Ages 1050-1500; Chapter 3 Gloucestershire in Tudor, Stuart & Georgian times 1500-1815; Chapter 4 Victorian and Edwardian Gloucestershire 1815-1914; Chapter 5 Gloucestershire and Bristol in the First World War 1914-18; Chapter 6 Gloucestershire and Bristol during the Inter-War years 1919-39; Chapter 7 Gloucestershire and Bristol during the Second World War 1939-45; Chapter 8 The Cold War and beyond 1945-2020; Appendix I Prehistoric Hillforts; Appendix II Castles, moated sites, and strong houses; Appendix III Licences to crenelate; Appendix IV Civil War locations; Appendix V Airfields and other aviation-related sites; Appendix VI Drill Halls, TA and Army Reserve Centres; Appendix VII Barracks and camps in the Second World War; Appendix VIII Locations of volunteer units; Appendix IX Pillboxes and anti-invasion defences; Appendix X Home Guard units; Appendix XI Air defence; Appendix XII Intelligence and Communications; Appendix XIII Munitions and logistics; Appendix XIV Military and auxiliary Hospitals; Appendix XV POW Camps in World War II; Bibliography; Index