Events

Battlefields Trust Online Talk: The Battle of Tewkesbury - a re-examination of the evidence

Tuesday 30th June 2026

All we really know about the Battle of Tewkesbury is who fought it, when, and who won. For the rest we have relied on accounts which are often partial because of politics or based on assumptions. The early accounts give strikingly different versions of important events. The talk will review accounts of the campaign and its aftermath, highlighting the differences in accounts and possible reasons for them. It will look at documentary evidence, local myths, historic and modern and how they fit into the narrative. No firm conclusions will be drawn!

Steve Goodchild is an accidental battlefield historian. A friendship led to him being a founder member of the Tewkesbury Medieval Festival organisers in 1984 and slowly becoming absorbed in the battle, its context and participants. In 1997, when property developers threatened what little remained of the site of the battle he helped found the Tewksbury Battlefield Society, helping to preserve this historically important site. With little writing experience beyond lots of technical reports and a few articles about the battle and battlefield matters, Pen & Sword took the risk of commissioning him to write the Tewkesbury book for their “Battlegrounds Wars of the Roses” series. In the twenty years since then, after much more research, walking the ground and conversations, Steve, applying his experience of forensic engineering, has refined his original perception of how the battle ebbed and flowed and jointly authored a new book with Dilip Sarker.

For further information.

• Contact name : Battlefields Trust Online Talks
• Contact email : info@battlefieldstrust.com