Level Completed
[posted by Gavin Robinson, 9:25 am, 30 November 2011]
The future has taken root in the present. It is done.
Or in other words:
No more forever FINISHED ABANDONED COMPLETE DONE FINAL LAST FINISHED We finished it. I finished it for you.
Yesterday I sent off the final typescript of my book to Ashgate. So it’s all over (apart from proofreading, indexing and then promoting it when it comes out). The title is now Horses, People and Parliament in the English Civil War: Extracting Resources and Constructing Allegiance, and the ISBN is 978-1-4094-2093-4. There were more things I could have done to make it better, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and as it ended up at 99,037 words there wasn’t space for anything else. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and I think I’ve written something that’s good enough to kick ass. Determinism and essentialism don’t stand a chance.
So now what?
I’m going to watch every episode of Thundercats.
And probably some more sensible things too, but my plans are in the air because I’m waiting to hear details of some possible paid work. Expect more blog posts (and maybe better ones too) than I’ve managed so far this year.
Also congratulations to Brett Holman, who has just got a book contract from Ashgate. As one of them finishes another one starts…
Comment by Andrew Hickey — 11:00 pm, 30 November 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
Congratulations! It’s a good feeling to get a book finally finished, isn’t it? And yours took a lot more work than any of mine.
(Though having said that, I can guarantee your experience will be the same as mine – you get your very first copy of the actual finished, on-the-bookshelves thing, open it up to a random page, and spot an obvious error you should have caught. Doing this is the sign your book is truly complete.)
Comment by Lay — 9:50 am, 1 December 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
Going off on an entirely unconnected tangent: are you aware of any fairly in-depth studies on the effects of telecommunications upon late 19th and early 20th century armies (say, between the Crimean War or the American Civil War and the beginning of World War I)? I’m starting to notice some interesting statements in contemporary texts about how extensive telecommunications would remove the need for low-level initiative since now every development could be reported to HQ and orders can be passed down the other way in no time and all–with over a century of hindsight, now we know that it’s not true, but it’s still an interesting avenue of research nevertheless. What I’m wondering about is whether somebody has covered the subject already.
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 10:40 am, 1 December 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
Andrew: Yes, that is definitely going to happen, even though the publishers are getting a professional copy-editor/proofreader to look at it before typesetting. I’ve seen loads of typos in expensive academic books. In my first journal article I managed to get two words obviously the wrong way round in a way that made no sense at all, but no-one spotted it until I got my free copy after publication.
Lay: I don’t know of anything myself, but it’s the sort of thing Chris Williams might know about. Gary Sheffield and Dan Todman did a volume of essays on command and control during WW1 which might have some background information on the pre-war period. The idea seems to have died very quickly during WW1. By 1918 British platoon commanders were encouraged to use a lot of initiative. David Kenyon’s work shows that cavalry divisions worked best when they didn’t have to wait for orders to be phoned in from above (he’s now got a new book out that covers a slightly longer period than his PhD thesis).
Comment by Brett — 11:38 am, 1 December 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
Congratulations! Looking forward to getting to this point myself :)
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 7:08 pm, 1 December 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
Thanks Brett. I’m looking forward to seeing both our books in print.
Comment by Lay — 4:17 pm, 5 December 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
Kenyon’s got a book coming out? I’ll certainly be on the lookout for it. I’ve read his thesis and Stephen Badsey’s book and they just left me wanting for more. Too bad nobody seems to be doing an extensive coverage of cavalry operations in the Russian Civil War or the Chinese wars in the 1930s.
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 4:47 pm, 5 December 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
It’s David Kenyon, Horsemen in No Man’s Land: British Cavalry and Trench Warfare 1914-1918, (Barnsley, Pen & Sword, August 2011). I’ll be buying it when I think I’ll have time to read it.
Comment by Nick — 9:53 pm, 5 December 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
Congratulations: eeally looking forward to reading it. There is also the added bonus that you are back blogging again!
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 9:57 am, 6 December 2011 [permanent link to this comment]
Thanks. Annoyingly I had to drop all the discussion of the war horse and mill horse pamphlet as I ran out of space and it was one of the few sections that could disappear without affecting anything else. At least it’ll make some good blog posts.