Martin C. Windrow (1944-2025) was a British

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

, editor and

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

of several hundredWindrow, Martin ''The Last Valley'', preface books, articles and

monograph A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...

s, particularly those on organizational or physical details of military history, and the history of the

post-war A post-war or postwar period is the interval immediately following the end of a war. The term usually refers to a varying period of time after World War II, which ended in 1945. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum, ...

French Foreign Legion.Osprey Publishin
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retrieved on March 10, 2007 His most notable works include ''The Last Valley'', an account of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu during the First Indochina War, which was published in 2004 to "critical acclaim", and ''Our Friends beneath the Sands'' published in 2010.

Biography

Windrow was educated at Wellington College, a boarding

independent school A private school or independent school is a school not administered or funded by the government, unlike a State school, public school. Private schools are schools that are not dependent upon national or local government to finance their fina ...

in the village of

Crowthorne Crowthorne is a village, and civil parish, in the Bracknell Forest district of southeastern Berkshire, England. It had a population of 7,806 at the United Kingdom Census 2021, 2021 census. Crowthorne is the location of Wellington College, Be ...

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...

. He began working on commission as an editor of articles on military and aviation history in the 1970s. He was an Associate of the

Royal Historical Society The Royal Historical Society (RHS), founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history. Origins The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the H ...

and the Foreign Legion Association of Great Britain. Windrow was a major contributor to

Osprey Publishing Osprey Publishing is a British publishing company specializing in military history formerly based in Oxford. Predominantly an illustrated publisher, many of their books contain full-colour artwork plates, maps and photographs, and the company p ...

, which specialises in military history. An obituary published by the company credited him with having commissioned and edited around 700 of the books it published between the 1960s and 2020s. Windrow also personally wrote 21 books which Osprey published between 1971 and 2024. Windrow died in 2025.

Works

* ''Rommel's Desert Army'', 1976. * ''Tank and AFV Crew Uniforms Since 1916'', Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1979, . * ''The Waffen-SS'', Osprey Publishing, 1984. . * ''Inside the Soviet Army Today'', 1987. * ''French Foreign Legion''. Men-at-Arms-Series; Osprey Military No. 300. Osprey, London 1996, . * ''The Algerian War, 1954-62''. Men-at Arms-Series; Osprey Military No. 312. Osprey, London 1997, . * ''Military Dress of the Peninsular War, 1808-14'', 1998. * ''The French Indochina War 1946–54'', 1998. * ''French Foreign Legion, 1914-45'', 1999. * ''The World's Greatest Military Leaders'', 2000. * ''Warriors and Warlords: The Art of Angus McBride'', 2002. * ''The Last Valley'', 2004. * '' Not One Step Back'', 2009. * ''Our Friends Beneath the Sands'', 2010.Osprey Publishin
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retrieved on March 10, 2007 * ''The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar'', 2014.

Notes

1944 births 2025 deaths British historians British military writers British military historians People educated at Wellington College, Berkshire {{UK-historian-stub