A recent comment that the terrain created by the late Peter Gilder for the film CALLAN was also photographed and used in the book edited by Peter Young and entitled THE WAR GAME made me look out my copy of the book ... and reminded me how much it had inspired me when I first saw a copy.
The book was divided into ten chapters (each of which covered a major battle and was written by a different author) and two appendices:
THE WAR GAME was edited by Brigadier Peter Young and illustrated with photographs taken by Philip O Stearns. It was published by Cassell & Company Ltd in 1972 (ISBN 0 304 29074 2).
In the acknowledgements at the back of the book it states that the figures came from the collections of David Chandler, Peter Gilder, Charles Grant, Lieutenant Commander John Sandars, Ed Smith, John Tunstill, and Brigadier Peter Young, and that the terrain was specially made for the book by Hinchliffe Models of Huddersfield.
The book was divided into ten chapters (each of which covered a major battle and was written by a different author) and two appendices:
- THERMOPYLAE BC480 by Charles Grant
- AGINCOURT 1415 by Philip Warner
- EDGEHILL 1642 by Peter Young
- BLENHEIM 1704 by David Chandler
- LOBOSITZ 1756 by Charles Grant
- SARATOGA 1777 by Aram Bakshian Jr
- AUSTERLITZ 1805 by David Chandler
- WATERLOO 1815 by James Lawford
- GETTYSBURG 1863 by Clifford C Johnson
- EL ALAMEIN 1942 by Donald Featherstone
- Appendix 1: The Principles of War Gaming
- Appendix 2: Model Soldier Suppliers
THE WAR GAME was edited by Brigadier Peter Young and illustrated with photographs taken by Philip O Stearns. It was published by Cassell & Company Ltd in 1972 (ISBN 0 304 29074 2).
In the acknowledgements at the back of the book it states that the figures came from the collections of David Chandler, Peter Gilder, Charles Grant, Lieutenant Commander John Sandars, Ed Smith, John Tunstill, and Brigadier Peter Young, and that the terrain was specially made for the book by Hinchliffe Models of Huddersfield.
Wonderful pictures! I don't own this book but it looks amazing.
ReplyDeleteMaudlin Jack Tar,
DeleteI think that second-hand copies can still be bought for a reasonable price from specialist booksellers.
All the best,
Bob
I have found a copy for £1.80 plus postage which seems too good to miss!
DeleteMaudlin Jack Tar,
DeleteA real bargain! I assume that you are going to buy it and enjoy it!
All the best,
Bob
I ordered it at once and await its arrival!
DeleteMaudlin Jack Tar,
DeleteI am sure that you'll enjoy reading it once it is delivered.
All the best,
Bob
I've had a copy of this book for over 40 years. The dust cover disintegrated long ago...
ReplyDeleteArchduke Piccolo,
DeleteIt sounds as if yours has been read quite frequently ... and enjoyed.
All the best,
Bob
I've spent many hours with this old friend of a book over the decades. I confess that the terrain itself never inspired me but.....
ReplyDeleteAs an interesting aside, a B&W picture of the Saratoga setup (my favourite pictures), from a different angle, appears in Charge!
Ross Mac,
DeleteIt is a good old wargaming friend. Having terrain like that featured in the book was something I aspired to have, but I found John Sandars' vehicles the most inspiring images in the book.
Thanks to you, I now know why that photograph from the Saratoga section looked familiar!
All the best,
Bob
I got a copy when it came out but haven't seen it for years and a search of my shelves reveals not trace. I wonder what happened to it? All is not in vain though as the search brought to light half a dozen forgotten books on the AWI and the Napoleonic Wars that I really must re-read.
ReplyDeleteIf my memory serves - and these days it often does not - the pictures were inspiring but the text less so (more history than wargaming and without the orders of battle, etc. really needed to game the conflicts). Still, there are a couple of pretty cheap 2nd hand copies on Amazon for anyone who wants them.
Mike Hall,
DeleteI hope that you find your copy of the book, although it sounds as if your search has turned up some interesting items.
You are right. This was very much a book about battles, illustrated with pictures of wargames rather than a wargaming book, although there was a simple guide to wargaming at the back of the book.
All the best,
Bob
Still one of my favorites! My high school librarian actually surprised me with a copy that she borrowed from her local library back in 1984. My grandparents gave me a new copy for my 22nd birthday in '88, and it still has pride on place on a lower bookshelf where our son can reach it when the mood strikes him. He seems to be as enthralled by it as I was.
ReplyDeleteBest Regards,
Stokes
Heinz-Ulrich von Boffke (Stokes),
DeleteIt is one of my favourite books as well, and it occupies a prominent place on my wargaming bookshelves.
It sounds as if it is inspiring a new generation of potential wargamers as well!
All the best,
Bob
Great book! Spent many hours with that. Now it's time to get it back off the shelf and revisit.
ReplyDeleteDan Foley,
DeleteIt sounds as if a lot of wargamers of a certain age were inspired by this book.
All the best,
Bob
This was the foundational text in my trajectory. I discovered it on the shelf of my local library sometime shortly after it must have been published, and the rest is history. I finally acquired a copy for myself 25 or so years later.
ReplyDeleteEd M,
DeleteWhat a great introduction to wargaming! I am please to read that you eventually managed to buy a copy for yourself.
All the best,
Bob
I got this book when I was 12 for Christmas. I used to pour over that book endlessly. Very inspirational!
ReplyDeleteChris,
DeleteThat must have been a great Christmas present for a young boy to receive!
All the best,
Bob
A classic book, no doubt! As you mention above, copies on ebay or Abebooks can be found for most reasonable prices.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Freitag,
DeleteI think that people would regard it as classic wargaming book because of its inspiring illustrations, and it is good to know that it can still be bought on the second-hand book market.
All the best,
Bob
My wife bought me a second hand copy in 1985 just after we met. It's probably my favourite ever (the book and the wife that is). Inspirational photos!
ReplyDeleteStryker,
DeleteYour wife sounds as if she is a lady of great judgement ... and that it was good to read that both she and the book are still your favourites!
All the best,
Bob
I bought it in an online auction sight unseen after confusing it with the other The War Game!
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Aaron
Prufrock (Aaron),
DeleteI do hope that you weren't too disappointed with your purchase. I have both books, and they are bot inspirational, but in very different ways.
All the best,
Bob
It's a delightful book. I came across a copy in the local library at an impressionable age. My own copy was a chance find in a second hand bookshop in Hampstead in about 1990. I think it was £3...
ReplyDeleteTim Gow,
DeleteIt seems that quite a few people had a similar experience; seeing the book in a library, and buying a copy at some later time.
All the best,
Bob
You are reminding me of my own experience a little bit earlier (early sixties) when I found a copy of Don Featherstone’s “Naval War Games” in the local library and was soon building galleys out of balsa, card and fuse wire. I was inspired enough to take a trip to Foyle’s and return with Don’s “War Games” and shortly thereafter acquired – I know not where from but it’s priced in dollars– Joe Morschauser’s “War Games in Miniature”. These first books will always be special whatever the apparent superior qualities of later purchases.
DeleteMike Hall,
DeleteYou started with three excellent books ... all of which sit in places of honour on my bookshelves. Of the three, Morschauser's is the one I'd put at the top of the pile.
All the best,
Bob
The picture of the Waterloo war-game is interesting, as I was sure that I had seen that building before. Sure enough, it features several times in the book Napoleonic Wargaming by Charles Grant. I think the link comes in the book's acknowledgements: ".....thanks to Peter Gilder of Hinchliffe Models, who created the terrain.........".
ReplyDeleteBob Kett,
DeleteI suppose that we should not be that surprised that this happened. Back then the world of wargaming in the UK seemed to have been a lot more intimate (and less commercial) than it is now, with stuff passing from one wargamer to another all the time.
All the best,
Bob
Thanks for the reminder
ReplyDeletePrince Lupus,
DeleteIt was my pleasure!
All the best,
Bob
Certainly a book that inspired me. I wonder where I've put my copy?
ReplyDeleteSun of York,
DeleteI suspect that you are not alone in being inspired by this book when you first read it ... and wondering where your copy is now!
All the best,
Bob
It was the Blenheim game that inspired me most. The figures seemed to be converted from ACW airfix if memory serves me correctly?
ReplyDeleteOne of my favourite chapters. There is certainly one very Airfix looking conversion but most appear to be 20mm metals, Les Higgins perhaps?
DeleteJon Meech,
DeleteI’m not sure what figures were used in the photographs, but some look like Les Higgins figures.
All the best,
Bob
Ross Mac,
DeleteI agree with you. They look like Les Higgins figures with a few Airfix conversions.
All the best,
Bob
I will have to dig this one out its dusty book grave somewhere .. maybe in the garage? Thanks Bob :)
ReplyDeleteGeordie an Exiled FoG,
DeleteGood luck with your digging!
All the best,
Bob
This book is now available on Archive.org aka the Wayback Machine, as are a handful of Featherstone books and Charles Grant's Wargaming in History: Waterloo. Interestingly, they have several of Featherstone's books from his other profession too - treating sports injuries.
ReplyDeleteI read this one along with a bunch of other period volumes in my college library when I first discovered wargaming, but was disappointed at the time - it was very little gaming and a lot of eye candy. I can appreciate it more now, but having read Charge! first I was expecting something in the same vein. I've rarely found anything with quite the style and joi de ludo Charge! exhibits - The Sword and the Flame comes closest perhaps.
Jennifer,
DeleteI am surprised that they are available online as the copyright is still 'live' and I doubt that permission has been given for them to be stored electronically. I believe that Donald Featherstone's wargaming books have been republished with the permission of the family by the 'History of Wargaming' project, but I am unsure about anything that was penned by Charles Grant or Peter Young ... although Charles Grant's son and grandson both wargame and the former has certainly written several books.
Compared to CHARGE! (which is a proper wargames book!), this book is a disappointment ... but when it was published, anything was better than nothing.
All the best,
Bob
I'm not up on the specifics, but I think they class themselves as a library and are operating under the same rules of "fair use." They are not precisely ebooks, but facsimiles of physical books with "flippable" pages. And they are all discarded from physical libraries and thus are presumably fair game. They also must be checked out, for limited periods, rather than downloaded.
DeleteIn other words, not like the illegal pdf of yours I've noticed in a couple places. But if a library purchased a hard copy of one of your books, then eventually discarded it, and Archive.org purchased it...
Archive.org's project is controversial with some publishers, though not all. I think they justify it as loaning out their own copies (as they do have physical books to scan); not everyone agrees.
DeleteJennifer,
DeleteThanks for the information.
It all sounds a bit dubious to me. Having had my work ripped off by so-called proponents of ‘free’ access to published work that is still under copyright, I may be somewhat biased. I have been accused by several of these people of being a wealthy fat-cat who was willing to make money out of poorer people who could not afford to buy my books!
As far as I know, none of my books has been sold to a library as I did not sign up to the Amazon and Lulu wider distribution options that included direct sales to libraries and book shops.
All the best,
Bob
Jennifer,
DeleteI paid a visit to Archive.org, and it seems to me that they are wrapping up what they are doing as being something beneficial to everyone but without consulting those whose work they are copying. I cannot stop them, but I don’t like it.
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
DeleteI think you can rest easy about your books getting into libraries, because they appear to be privately published, without ISBN numbers, entries into the British Library or Library of Congress, etc which are practically required to enter into a library catalog. If one gets donated, it'll almost certainly end up on the sale shelf simply because no one will know how to catalog it.
When it comes to libraries, barring Dungeons and Dragons and Star Wars roleplaying games which are popular enough to be in many collections, I suspect gaming is being left to the ebooks. Virtually all of Pen and Sword's publications, for example, are accessible through a library app in the US called Hoopla, which in addition to ebooks covers a variety of movies and comics - all licensed by the publisher. This includes all their wargaming titles.
Jennifer,
DeleteIn fact, although my books are privately published, they all have ISBN numbers, unlike many wargame books I see on sale. As to cataloguing them (or not) … well, I’ll leave that to someone who has much greater knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System et al than I have to sort that one out!
I understand that my PP&SW book is on the shelves of the libraries of the Sorbonne and the Ecole de Guerre in France because one of my co-authors works in both lecturing about military history, and donated copies for use by his students. Copies of my non-wargaming books about Freemasonry are in the collections of the United Grand Lodge of England and the Provincial Lodge of Hertfordshire’s museum and archive … so I do have a small library presence out there!
Pen & Sword books seems to be a bit of an odd operation when it comes to books and authors. I have a friend who had the first of two books about the end of the Roman Republic published by P&S which sold reasonably well, but four years on he is still waiting for the second volume to be published. The problem is what they term ‘technical difficulties’ in that the book contains several maps … and P&S want the author to pay for them to be redrawn by a professional cartographer. As this will cost far more than any money he will get as an author, my friend is reluctant to pay and P&S refuse to. A bit of an impasse!
All the best,
Bob
Just looking through the Featherstone entries and saw this post. The El Alamein figures and vehicles are from John Sandars collection. Some lovely stuff there. One of the gamers that inspired me in my youth. the things he achieved with card and converted Airfix figures were truly astounding.
ReplyDeleteFred,
DeleteJohn Sandars inspired some of my vehicle conversions as well as several of the game mechanisms I’ve used over the years.
I understand that his collection - or at least part of it - is now housed at the National Army Museum.
All the best,
Bob