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Thursday 27 March 2014

Yesterday's parcels

My wife and I had a very busy morning (first the floorer arrived to lay the latex foundation for the vinyl floor he will lay tomorrow and then we went to IKEA at Lakeside to order the fitted cupboards we are installing at one end of the newly refurbished conservatory) and it was not until the middle of the afternoon before I could open and enjoy the contents of the two parcels that arrived yesterday.

One was from Amazon, and contained a copy of Ian Hernon's THE SWORD AND THE SKETCH BOOK: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S WARS.


The book was published by Spellmount in 2012 (ISBN 978 0 7524 6598 2) and is a brief history of the major wars that the British Army took part in during the reign of Queen Victoria. It is lavishly illustrated with pictures taken from the pages of publications such as THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS and covers the following conflicts:
  • The Afghan Wars
  • The Opium Wars
  • The Sikh Wars
  • The Crimean War
  • The Indian Mutiny
  • The Abyssinian Expedition
  • The Ashanti Wars
  • The Zulu War
  • The Anglo-Egyptian War
  • Khartoum and the Sudan
  • The North-West Frontier and Tirah
  • The Boer Wars
Having already read copies of Ian Hernon's trilogy entitled BRITAINS' FORGOTTEN WARS I can expect that this book will be a pleasure to read and and a source of campaign and scenario idea.

The second parcel contained a number of painted 25/28mm-scale Napoleonic figures from the range that was originally sold with the part work about the Battle of Waterloo. These are exactly the same as the figures that I already own, and these additional figures will enable me to 'raise' the following 'units', each with a strength of four figures:
  • Two French Infantry Units (One Line and One Light)
  • One Brunswick Infantry Unit
  • Three Prussian Infantry Units (All Landwehr)
I have bids on some further groups of Del Prado figures maturing over the next few days, and with luck I may well be able to increase the size of my collection by quite a few 'units' within a couple of weeks.

4 comments:

  1. Oh, that book looks brilliant!

    Sounds like the conservatory is coming along nicely.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fitz-Badger,

    I have started to read the book, and I am particularly impressed by the illustrations as I have seen very few of them before.

    As to the conservatory ... well hopefully we are on the final lap. It should be completed by this time next week ... assuming that the fitted cupboards arrive on time.

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  3. As I was ordering myself some books recently I decided to treat myself to a copy of "The Sword and The Sketchbook" as well. It arrived yesterday evening and I quickly skimmed through. Looks like a good source of inspiration and ideas of what some of the terrain and buildings and such looked like. My only "complaint" is it isn't long enough! I want more. ha ha

    Thanks for your post! Otherwise I wouldn't have even known about the book in the first place.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fitz-Badger,

    I am pleased to hear that you have found the book so useful, and that my brief review helped you to 'discover' it.

    I found that most of the illustrations he chose to use were ones that I had not seen before, and that they were all very evocative of the times and places where the various wars were fought.

    I agree that it would have been nice if the book had been even longer and with more illustrations ... but I suppose that they had to draw the line somewhere!

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete

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