Sublime

‘Oh, Dr Archer, people rarely say what they truly mean. It’s one of the first lessons of spycraft.’

Henry VIII, determined to stop the rot, demanded, by Act of Parliament, that all men under the age of sixty, with the exception of clergymen and judges, should ‘use and exercise shooting in longbows’. His laws set out the stipulation that boys between seven and seventeen years of age were to have a minimum of two arrows as well as a bow provided

There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the “best men,” as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.

Drew up magic from the ground and poured it into their shields, imbuing them with strange properties. Powered by the earth. There might be enough magic left in the ground for the old charms to still do their job. But a lead bullet, chemically propelled, pays as much attention to old fay magic as it might pay to a veil of cobwebs. It punches through

Tudor bows are fashioned from a single piece of wood, carefully selected for its straight grain and cut to include both heartwood and sapwood from the tree. The heartwood is older and denser and lies towards the centre of the living tree. It is strong in compression. The sapwood lying close under the bark is much newer wood, more supple and

The gentlemanly, but slightly Benthamite, gun-room were strict observers of the naval etiquette that prevented any subordinate from speaking to his captain without being spoken to first; and they had grown thoroughly used to Captain Hamond, to whose mind this was a congenial rigour. And then again they were a proud set of men – most of them could

Unfortunately the gunner, ‘being not so careful as he should have beene’, had forgotten that his guns were loaded and that the Captain was within range. One ball scored a direct hit and ‘slew the Captain and the boatswain’s mate starke dead; so that they that went to see the funeral of another were both buried themselves’.