Towton :: A Cock Up!

A. A. Gill’s excellent article on Towton was the cover story of yesterday’s Sunday Times Magazine.   If you haven’t seen the magazine I recommend you read it online although the pictures & illustrations are missing.

It’s a wonderful piece of general history writing and Gill does a great job of creating the brooding atmosphere so appropriate for Towton.  The online comments are full of praise and rightly so.

So what’s this about a cock up?  There’s a wonderful map in the magazine just like those in Look and Learn.  However the map contains a marvellous error.  The Lancastrians are shown with a white rose and the Yorkists with a red one!

For the basic history Gill relied heavily on  A. W. Boardman’s book on Towton.  So if you want to know more about Towton this is the obvious staring point.

However, I’m not sure which edition he used.  The first edition was published in 1994. I have the 2000 edition.  In putting this post together I found that Boardman has published a new edition in June this year. I’ll be looking out for this new edition.

Of course for wargamers there’s always  the Poleaxed Sourcebooks from Freezywater which cover all the battles of the Wars of the Roses:

• Blazons of major personalities.
  
• Detailed orders of battle and maps.
  
• Full descriptions of the battles.
  
• Special scenario rules.
  
• Fully indexed rolls of honour.
  
• Vol 1 and Vol 2 free samples.

Other useful links:

• A. W. Boardman’s web site.
  
• Towton Battlefield Society.
  
• Towton resources from the Battlefields Trust.
  
• The Battle of Towton at Wikipedia.
  
• Battles of the Wars of the Roses.
  
• Lance & Longbow Society.