Osprey is a publishing house in the United Kingdom that should be a household name to the swarms of us. Osprey continues to expand their Campaign series with an astonishing 316^th book in this installment. The campaign series mostly covers large scale or pivotal campaigns of a given conflict that carried large ramifications for either it success, failure, or complete change of government or royal families. In this installment the campaign series covers the bloodiest battles in English history.

For the Campaign series, the chapters are organized as follows:

• Origins of the campaign
• Chronology
• Opposing Commanders
• Opposing Forces
• Opposing Plans
• The Campaign
• The Battle
• The Aftermath
• The Battlefield Today
• Bibliography
• Index

The battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 is one of the most important battles in English history. King Henry IV faced his erstwhile ally Henry Percy Earl of Northumberland in a bloody contest on a field outside the Shropshire town of Shrewsbury where two English armies, well-matched, and fighting with similar equipment and tactics, struggled in an archery duel in which the arrows ‘fell like leaves in Autumn', before the battle was ultimately decided in close quarter hand-to-hand combat. With his victory, Henry IV secured the Lancastrian hold on the kingdom and demonstrated the right of his bloodline to the throne.

Using full color artwork and specially commissioned battlefield maps and illustrations, this is the fascinating story of the battle without which the reign of Henry V, his wars and glorious victories against the French, and the later disastrous reign of Henry VI and subsequent Wars of the Roses could not have happened.

The images are crisp and well presented and Osprey has used the same process for manufacturing their books realizing the old added notion “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” and has always produced quality reference material.

My thanks to IPMS/USA and Osprey Publishing for giving me the opportunity to review this book. I appreciated this book thoroughly and learned about a very important but not widely discussed era.