Historical odds & ends from the 18th century & the Napoleonic era

About the Author

Martin Boycott-Brown was born near Diss, in Norfolk, in 1952. His family moved to Cambridge a couple of years later, and he was brought up and went to school in that city.

In 1974 he went to Sussex University, where he studied the History and Theory of Art with Italian, and did contextual courses in Literature, History, and Philosophy. Among his tutors were Quentin Bell, Lino Pertile, and Peter Burke, to mention only some of the distinguished scholars who taught at the university at that time.

Having graduated none too brilliantly, he took a job driving and washing cars for a couple of years, then moved to Italy. He then taught English language at the University of Venice for a year, and English language and literature at the University of Verona for seven years.

After pursuing other lines of work for a couple of years, he began some research into the battle of Rivoli, which had taken place (some two centuries previously) about ten miles from where he was living. He returned to England after an absence of ten years, and subsequently dedicated much of his time to researching Napoleon's 1796 campaign in Italy. The photograph shows the author signing copies of his book on this subject at the Napoleonic Fair in London just prior to its official release date at the end of January 2001.

A paper on guerilla warfare in northern Italy given at a symposium in the University of Liverpool has also been published in the symposium proceedings, entitled "Patriots, partisans and land pirates", edited by Charles Esdaile, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

More recently, the author has retrained in psychology, and is presently undertaking research into the psychology of generalship in the First World War at Nottingham Trent University.

The author also has an abiding interest in aviation and its history, and was for some years an instructor at Cambridge Gliding Club, which flies from the former WW2 airfield at Gransden Lodge. Previously, the club spent many years operating out of Duxford, where the author went solo in 1986. The photo on the left shows an early solo in a Schleicher K8.

Other interests include building web-sites. Some examples may be seen at:

http://www.ertz-violins.com

http://www.wardviolins.com