The History of Fortification

by Ian V. Hogg

Traces the history of the use of fortifications to defend territory from the mud walls of prehistoric times through medieval castles to present-day missile silos

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1981

About the author

Ian V. Hogg enlisted in the Royal Artillery of the British Army in April 1945. During World War II he served in Europe and in eastern Asia. After the war he remained in the military. In the early 1950s, he served in the Korean War. Altogether he served in the military for 27 years. Upon retiring in 1972, he held the appointment of Master Gunner at the Royal Military College of Science, where he taught on the subjects of firearms, artillery, and their ammunition and use. Hogg also had an interest in the subject of fortification and was one of the founding members of the Fortress Study Group in 1975.

His first books were published in the late 1960s while he was still an instructor. After retiring from the military, he pursued the career of military author and historian. He was editor of Jane's Infantry Weapons from 1972 to 1994. He worked with a skilled artist, John Batchelor, to ensure that his books were well illustrated with cutaway diagrams. He contributed articles to a variety of journals, and his books have been translated into a dozen languages .
Hogg has been described by publishing people who worked with him as "an unassuming man, with a gift to pass on [his] knowledge at any level, and often with a dry humour". He was also respected for his professionalism as an author. He was described as "a consummate professional who (unlike most of his peers) usually submitted manuscripts on time, within agreed parameters, and accompanied by all the illustrations."

Hogg was a frequent guest on the History Channel's Tales of the Gun, as well as other military-related television programs.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[snailsnail]

As a novice-level castle nerd I found this book pretty enjoyable, though escapist rather than scholarly.
While being engagingly and simply written and well illustrated, It nevertheless manages to be neither deep nor broad. Its lack of breadth stems from an absurd level of eurocenticism, even anglocentrism at times – you can't write a book called The History of Fortification and put things like "... and they maybe built some walls in Asia, but I don't know anything about them..." (slight paraphrase) in it. And its lack of depth stems from a lack of context (social, political, economic...), and a lack of detail... There is no, for example, sidebar on the evolving shape of the arrow slit, or short piece on the daily life of a conscript manning a Dutch Fort.

It is, nevertheless an approachable and easily digestible introduction to the topic which held my attention and left me wanting more despite being a little repetitive as it describes its thirteenth counterscarp gallery, or especially in it's case studies: occasionally the text is broken by a double page spread focusing on a particular fortification, these are extremely well illustrated and would be welcome as pallet cleansers if they didn't just repeat almost verbatim information already appearing elsewhere in the text.