He was awarded a Commonwealth Research Scholarship to complete a PhD at the University of Western Sydney, entitled Scottish Soldiers in France and The Netherlands, 1660–1692 (conferred 2002).
The project grew out of his earlier prosopographical research into the Huguenot military support lent to William of Orange during the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
A second book, Scottish Soldiers in France in the Reign of the Sun King: Nursery for Men of Honour History of Warfare: 24 (Brill Academic Publishers), based on his doctoral thesis, appeared in 2004.
He has written and revised nine articles for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and his most recent biography is the first scholarly long study of Friedrich Hermann von Schomberg to be written in English based on new research:[1] Marshal Schomberg, 1615–1690: ‘the ablest soldier of his age’: International soldiering and the formation of state armies in seventeenth–century Europe (Sussex Academic Press, 2005).
[6] He explores the rise of nationalism, the transition from contract-based military service to the reliance on standing forces, and religion as a chief motivation for many soldiers.