Written threescore years ago, by an English gentleman, who served first in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, the Glorious King of Sweden, till his death, and after that in the Royal Army of King Charles the First, from the beginning of the Rebellion to the end of the War.
[2]The nominal author of the work was a 'Colonel Andrew Newport', a Shropshire-born soldier.
Although of age (20 in 1642) to have served in the English Civil War, there is doubt about this due to the absence of any record that he did, and he appears in no list of Royalists fined by parliament for 'delinquency', unlike his father and elder brother.
Defoe's method "in which the author hangs the chronicle and discussion of great military and political events upon the thread of the personal experiences of an individual" suited Churchill's sprawling histories of World War I and World War II.
In defending this stylistic choice, Churchill wrote, "I am perhaps the only man who has passed through both the two supreme cataclysms of recorded history in high Cabinet office.