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Welch, Ronald

For the King; Knight Crusader; The Galleon, [39] 5, 30; Captain of Foot, [41] 6; Bowman of Crécy; The Hawk, [43] 6; Captain of Dragoons, [45] 46; Escape from France; Nicholas Carey, [47] 39; Mohawk Valley, [49] 41; Ensign Carey; Tank Commander, [51] 6; Sun of York, [53] 6; The Road to Waterloo, [57] 6

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20220204170510 Collectable Classic Children’s Books | The Carey Novels by Ronald Welch | Slightly Foxed Cubs

Collectable Classic Children’s Books | Slightly Foxed Cubs

Ronald Welch’s Carey novels follow the fortunes of the same family from their involvement in the Crusades to their service in the First World War. Grippingly plotted and scrupulously researched, together they join up the dots of English history in a remarkably vivid and human way. Tomorrow marks forty years since Ronald Welch’s death and, as befits a man who held such reverence for dates, we’re commemorating this anniversary and celebrating his wonderful books. He certainly knew how to bring history alive for younger readers. You can’t finish a Welch book without having grasped such precise details as the construction of a crusader’s armour and why it was so designed, or why the longbow was crucial to the English victory at the Battle of Crécy. Most importantly they’re brilliant reads – fast-paced, colourful and imaginative, with entirely believable central characters.
20210616154646 Ronald Welch, Escape From France | Slightly Foxed Cubs

Escape from France | The news from Paris was brief and startling . . .

Ronald Welch, Escape from France

The news from Paris was brief and startling. King Louis, the Queen and all the Royal family had escaped from Paris and were believed to be making for the German frontier. Already a petition had been submitted to the Assembly for the proclamation of a Republic. Richard whistled softly. He might sleep through lectures on the constitution of Athens, though he had read far more widely on that subject than many of his friends suspected, but he followed the politics of Europe with an intelligent and well-informed interest. Well, this would put the cat among the pigeons, he thought.
20160301144431 Ronald Welch, Mohawk Valley - Foxed Cubs

Learning from the Wilderness

Galen O’Hanlon on Ronald Welch, Mohawk Valley

You should never camp in a ravine. Look for higher ground, and a windbreak – a fallen tree is fine, but rocks are the best. Gather balsam wood for bedding, and use your tomahawk to cut firewood from a dead tree. Make two fires. Set the bigger one against the rocks for warmth, and spread the ashes of the smaller one over the ground you wish to sleep on – they will stop it being so cold and damp. Catch fish from the river, but keep an eye out for Indians moving silently through the forest on moccasined feet. This much I have learnt from Ronald Welch’s Mohawk Valley . . .
20150901161224 William Stobbs illustration - Ronald Welch, Escape from France

Joining the Grown-ups

Matthew Adams on Ronald Welch, Escape from France & Nicholas Carey

Revisiting the Carey novels today, I am struck by how fresh and magnetizing they have remained, and by how much there is in these books – as there is in all good children’s literature – that can be enjoyed by adults. It is common for readers of Welch to credit him with sparking a love of history (I know an Oxford scholar of medieval literature who says she owes her career to Welch); what we hear less often is how subtle and careful his use of history can be. Escape from France and Nicholas Carey work brilliantly as historical fiction because the history with which they are suffused is always given a human face.
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Marching with Marlborough

Jeremy Lewis on Ronald Welch, Captain of Dragoons

Published in 1956, Captain of Dragoons is set in the reign of Queen Anne, during the early years of the War of the Spanish Succession, and the relevant member of the family is Charles Carey, ‘a tall, lean young officer of Dragoons, with a crop of black hair cut short for comfort under his wig, and a pair of inky black brows that were convenient warning signals that his quick temper was rising’; he is also one of the most brilliant swordsmen in the Duke of Marlborough’s army, and is given ample opportunities to display his prowess.
20140301100142 Amanda Theunissen on Ronald Welch, Captain of Foot

A Reluctant Hero

Amanda Theunissen on Ronald Welch, Captain of Foot

What would you do if you were a soldier, the last in a long line of fighting ancestors who had all distinguished themselves in battle, but you really hated going to war and wanted to give it all up and become a writer? This is the dilemma for Chris Carey, serving in the 43rd Light Infantry under Wellington in the Peninsular War. He’s the reluctant hero of Captain of Foot, the latest volume in the Slightly Foxed Cubs edition of the Carey saga by Ronald Welch.
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Joining up the Dots

Hazel Wood on Ronald Welch, Knight Crusader, The Galleon, and For the King

In the endlessly wet, cold, dark days of last January, when hibernation seemed the only possible option, I was given the perfect book to escape into – a children’s book as it happened. Reading it brought back to me the old sofa in an upstairs room where I used to go and curl up as a child and dream myself back into other times and places. I realize now that it was from the children’s authors I read then, rather than anything I learned in the classroom, that I connected with English history. They lit up my imagination. During those endless afternoons I was the lonely Roman soldier on Hadrian’s Wall dreaming of home, the medieval peasant in his hut in the forest, the little girl living near the docks in Tudor London, catching her first glimpse of the great ship Mary Rose.

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