Cruise reading

In my recent blog entry about my cruise to the Baltic, I did not mention anything about the books that I read.

Now sea days can be boring, but I find them very relaxing. I write wargames rules – hence the latest version of WHEN EMPIRES CLASH! – and read. Usually my reading is either military history or crime novels set in the nineteenth century (especially anything by Boris Akunin!).

On my last cruise I read CHURCHILL’S WIZARDS – THE BRITISH GENIUS FOR DECEPTION 1914-1945 by Nicholas Rankin …

… and BRITAIN’S FORGOTTEN WARS – COLONIAL CAMPAIGNS OF THE 19TH CENTURY by Ian Hernon.

CHURCHILL’S WIZARDS explains how camouflage developed during World Wars I and II from simple visual ‘tricks’ that hid things from view into the field of confusion and distraction, culminating in the creation of the totally mythical FUSAG (First United States Army Group) that the Germans still believed was preparing to invade France via the Pas de Calais weeks after the Normandy invasion had taken place.

BRITAIN’S FORGOTTEN WARS is the paperback compilation of Ian Hernon’s three hardback books about Britain’s colonial wars of the nineteenth century. The book covers:

Part One – Massacre and Retribution

• The First Kandy War, 1803 – 5
• The Falklands, 1833
• The Flafstaff War, 1845 – 6
• The Jamaica Rebellion, 1865
• The Arracan Expedition, Andaman Islands, 1867
• The Magdala Campaign, 1867 – 8
• The Modoc Indian War, 1872 – 3
• The Riel Rebellion, 1885
• The Ashanti War of the Golden Stool, 1900

Part Two – The Savage Empire

• The Capture and Loss of Buenos Aires, 1806 – 7
• The First Burma War, 1824 – 6
• The Black War – Tasmania, 1824 – 30
• The Opium War, 1839 – 42
• The Persian War, 1856 – 7
• The Arrow or Second China War, 1856 – 60
• The Shortest War – Zanzibar, 1896
• The Benin Massacre, 1897
• The Tirah Campaign, 1897 – 8

Part Three – Blood in the Sand

• The Gurkha War, 1814 – 16
• The Defeat of the Borneo Pirates, 1840 – 9
• The Storming of Madagascar, 1845
• The First Sikh War, 1845 – 6
• The Second Sikh War, 1848 – 9
• Eureka Stockade, Australia, 1854
• The Defence of Kars, Turkey, 1855
• The Fenian Invasion of Canada, 1866
• The Battle of Orange Walk, Belize, 1872
• The Hut Tax War, Sierra Leone, 1898

For a colonial wargamer like myself this is a mine of information about some of the more obscure colonial wars Britain fought, and is one of my recommended ‘best reads’ for likeminded wargamers.