Agincourt

The story of the battle of Agincourt. A small English expeditionary force in Northern France battling to reach the coast before being cut off by an enemy superior in numbers and equipment; a victory plucked from the jaws of certain-seeming defeat - this story is familiar in the twentieth century. It is also the story of Agincourt in the fifteenth. The distinguished historical novelist Rosemary Hawley Jarman here recreates the whole of the brief, foolhardy expedition mounted by a 28-year-old English king determined to regain the realm across the Channel he believed was his by right. The siege of Harfleur, the ravages of disease, the gradual encirclement, the decision to break out and march through hostile territory to Calais, all lead up to the rainy dawn of 25 October 1415 - St Crispin's Day - when the ragged, hungry English came face to face with a mighty and magnificently accoutred French army and won one of the most overwhelming victories in the chronicles of war.