In this book they are recruited by an English noble for 40 days fighting in France on behalf of King Edward III. Essex Dogs,” a first novel by the best-selling historian Dan Jones, opens with a group of soldiers pressed together inside a landing craft approaching the coast of Normandy at dawn.

However, what starts out as a brilliant premise, a small team of soldiers Fight for fortune and glory and each other in the opening months of the 100 years war, turns into a slog of a read that fails to draw you in. Reading the stories of Loveday and Co is like being a fly on the wall to an epic moment in history but it lacks narrative flair.Loveday and Romford, because they are given back stories and possess as a result a certain emotional complexity, are by far the most interesting and fully realized characters in the group, and, indeed, in the novel as a whole. The Essex Dogs of the title are a 10-strong band of mercenaries hired by the nobleman Sir Robert Le Straunge to take part in King Edward III’s invasion of France.

They walk; they ride; they fight and when they win, burn down whole villages, killing or chasing away the common folk who live there. Jones creates compelling and authentic characters - bloodthirsty, profane soldiers lacking conscience, killing for coin, yet fighting bravely alongside each other.

The one distinct character voice in the story is Northampton, but his voice is so over the top that he ends up sounding like some post-watershed character from Blackadder. The ordinary warriors and their ‘superiors’, the knights and lords, are all painted as trained killers. The Essex Dogs aren’t given too much depth and there’s a thread in the story where some of them try to protect a naive and wayward young recruit to their band when I couldn’t quite see why they should apart from a feeling of comradely brotherhood which didn’t quite mesh with their personalities.

They disembark on the beach, where they meet a barrage of enemy missiles and must scramble to safety as soldiers from other boats drop dead all around them. Northampton was enjoyable and provided comic relief, however, at times it made me think of Rik Mayall acting as 'Flash-heart'.The story does illicit a certain window of the personalities and idea's of the time, but nevertheless still comes up a little short. In addition to viewing the conflict through their eyes, we also get the perspectives of renegade priests, the ever-scheming aristocrats and merchants, and the ordinary people who are caught in the conflict mostly against their will. Rape is heavily implied too by the author without gratuitously dwelling on this dark aspect of medieval conquest.