British Army List

The British Army List is a list (or more accurately seven series of lists) of serving regular, militia or territorial British Army officers, kept in one form or another, since 1702.

Manuscript lists of army officers were kept from 1702–1752, the first official list being published in 1740.

Regular army

 * Annual Army Lists, 1754–1879 (WO 65)
 * Quarterly Army Lists (First Series), 1879–1922
 * Half-Yearly Army Lists, 1923 - Feb 1950 (From 1947, annual, despite the name)
 * Modern Army Lists, 1951-Ongoing
 * Part 1; serving officers.
 * Part 2; retired officers, as of 2011 four-yearly
 * Part 3; the Gradation List, a short biography of officers, a restricted publication not generally available.

Other lists

 * Monthly Army Lists, 1798-June 1940. Officers of colonial, militia and territorial units are included.
 * Quarterly Army Lists (Second Series), July 1940-December 1950. These superseded the Monthly Army Lists, and, for the remainder of World War II were not published but produced as confidential documents, monthly or bi-monthly until December 1943 and quarterly until April 1947, then three times a year, April, August and December.
 * Home Guard List, 1939–1945
 * Militia Lists - various militia lists pertaining to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are extant.
 * Hart's Army List, an unofficial list, produced between 1839 and 1915, containing details of war service which the official lists started covering only in 1881.

Further reading and bibliography

 * The army lists of the Roundheads and Cavaliers: containing the names of the officers in the Royal and Parliamentary armies of 1642, Edward Peacock (ed) (1874)
 * English army lists and commission registers, 1661–1714, Charles Dalton (ed) (1892–1904)
 * Henry George Hart, Hart's army list : the new army list exhibiting the rank, standing, and various services of every officer in the Army on full pay (1839-)
 * William Spencer, Army service records of the First World War (seventh edition, 2006)