Philip Macdougall: 14 books

Portsmouth Dockyard has a long and distinguished history. Functioning in a naval capacity since 1495, although more active as a dockyard from the Victorian period, few other places have such a prominent place in Britain’s naval history. The dockyard is the oldest that the Royal Navy has, and boasts...

Dr Philip MacDougall, local historian, takes you on a journey through the City of Chichester revealing much of its lesser-known history. Here you will find the story behind the city’s nineteenth-century banking crisis, the activities of a London mob of criminals who targeted the Goodwood races,...

Georgian London was the hub of the world’s largest industrial-military complex, underpinning and securing a global trading empire that was entirely dependent on the Royal Navy for its existence. Philip MacDougall explores the bureaucratic web that operated within the wider city area before giving...

Founded in 1570, Chatham Dockyard quickly became one of the most important naval yards for the repair and building of warships, maintaining a pre-eminent position for the next 400 years. Located on the River Medway, the yard was responsible for the construction of over 500 warships in all, these ranging...

Chichester History Tour is a unique insight into the illustrious history of this famous West Sussex town. This is an exciting guided walk around the town, its well-known places and hidden corners, and explains what they meant to local people throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century....

A look at the dark side of life, Victorian-style, when nothing was quite as it seemed and a public execution could be an entertaining family day out. Murderers, poachers, thieves, pickpockets and vagabonds all went about their business with impunity. Crime took place on the streets, on public transport,...

In these days of ubiquitous, non-stop media and information you would think that there were few secrets anywhere left to reveal, but when it comes to Chatham there remain a surprising number of facts and idiosyncrasies that, over the years, have remained obscure. Secret Chatham is a journey through...

Chatham is a town that has been undergoing change for the last five hundred years. It all began with the arrival of the naval dockyard in the sixteenth century. From this, a town was created which began to grow with the rapidity of a Chatham built warship. The site of the former dockyard is still...

Chichester is a city with an unbroken history that stretches back to Roman times or earlier. Its main city streets follow the original pattern laid out almost two thousand years ago while the buildings that line many of those streets, when not medieval in origin, most frequently date to Georgian or...

Spain (1936-9), China (1937 onwards), Mongolia (1939), Finland (1939-40) and France (1939-40) were a testing ground for a new approach to air tactics with western democracies and totalitarian states analysing the resulting lessons. Attention in Air Wars 1920-1939: The Development and Evolution of...

Chatham History Tour is a unique insight into the illustrious history of this historic Kentish town and its former dockyard, now a major tourist attraction. This book guides us through the streets and alleyways, showing how its famous landmarks used to look and how they’ve changed over the years,...

This illustrated history portrays one of England’s finest cities. It provides a nostalgic look at Portsmouth’s past and highlights the special character of some of its most important historic sites. The photographs are taken from the Historic England Archive, a unique collection of over 12 million...

The history of the Medway Towns is synonymous with the large-scale military industrial complex that was centred on the dockyard, military barracks and various fortifications. This has, over many years, provided employment for the people of Chatham and Gillingham as well as Rainham, Rochester and Strood,...

Examinations of wargaming for entertainment, education, and military planning, in terms of design, critical analysis, and historical contexts. Games with military themes date back to antiquity, and yet they are curiously neglected in much of the academic and trade literature on games and game...