Delving deeply at the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre ... yet again!

Now that Sue and I are both members of the Friends of the Royal Greenwich Museums, we get regular invitations to special events and the series of 'Delve Deeper' tours that are run at the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre.

The most recent of these took place on Tuesday evening and concentrated on the preservation of the wide range of paper and paper-based items held in the museums' huge collections. We were taken around by Professor Tania Kovats of the University of Dundee and Emmanuelle Largeteau, the paper conservation manager of the Royal Museums Greenwich.

Our tour started in the meeting room near the entrance to the Centre. We passed through the main doors ...

... and were taken to one of the 3D object storage rooms, ...

...where Professor Kovats showed us several items of particular interest, including a Georgian jigsaw map that was made from printed paper on thin wood.

She also showed and talked to us about several other items, included views of Trieste and Venice as seen and painted from the sea and a view of Venice drawn by the famous Victorian sea artist William Lionel Wyllie.

We were then taken to one of the picture storage rooms, ...

... where the Professor showed us examples of portraits created using pastels and described the difficulties that the medium presented in terms of long-term storage and preservation.

Ms Largeteau then took us to the paper conservation room ...

... where she showed us several very interesting examples of drawings by the Dutch artists, the father and son Willhelm van den Veldes the Elder and Willhelm van den Veldes the Younger.

(The National Maritime Museum is currently hosting a special exhibition of the work of the two van den Veldes in the Queen's House, Greenwich.)

Our tour took just under ninety minutes, and was thoroughly absorbing ... and we are already looking forward to our next 'Delve Deeper' tour.

Four and a half million hits!

Yesterday my visit counter hit a new high … four and a half million hits!

I wrote my first blog post on 18th September 2008, and at the time I had no idea of the impact blogging was going to have on my wargaming life. Now, some fourteen and a half years and over 5,100 blog posts later, I’ve passed another major milestone.

Back in 2008, when I started this blog, I was still working: now I am retired, and have been for nearly nine years. In that time I’ve written or co-authored well over twenty books, most of which are wargame-related, and suffered from colon/bowel and prostate cancers. I’m still going strong (although I am a bit slower getting up and down stairs!) and hope to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

I’m now looking to break the five million ‘hits’ barrier … so keep visiting my blog and I’ll try to keep writing blog posts that will be of interest.

SALUTE 50: A photo-report

I arrived at ExCel just before 11.00am ... and concourse from the Elizabeth Line and DLR stations was very full.

Unfortunately for my feet, SALUTE 50 was being held at the far end of the complex, ...

... and by the time I got to the entrance I was already feeling tired.

Thankfully, by going just a little bit later and buying my ticket in advance, I was allowed straight in. I was handed a goody bag containing a copy of the show guide, a couple of flyers, and a free 28mm resin figure of a Viking Jarl ...

... and almost as soon as I walked into the main hall, I almost walked into another member of Wargame Developments, our webmaster David Burden! This set the tone for the rest of my time at SALUTE where, when I wasn't taking photographs of various games, I was talking to loads of my fellow wargamers. These included Henry Hyde, David Crook, Big Lee, David in Suffolk, Rob Young, Ian Dury, Tamsin P, Adolfo Laurenti, Mark Urban, and Andy Callan ... to name but a few!

All-in-all I had a great time, but eventually my arthritis and scoliosis became so painful that I had to go home to rest and recuperate.

Will I be going back again next year?

Judging by this year I certainly will if I am fit and well enough to do so ... but now, onto the photo-report!

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Ferocious fighting at Ferozaphur, 21st December 1845 (Crawley Wargames Club)

The Dambuster Challenge (Peterborough Wargames Club)

Fallujah, Iraq, 2004 (Maidstone Wargames Society)

Bread and Beef!: Battle of Domstadtl, 30th June 1758 (Ardhammer Group)

The price of distraction, 29th June 1941 (Anschluss Publishing)

The Zagory Rebellion: A night at Heidi's (Cornwall Wargames Association)

Kaiserschlacht 1918 redux (1/72nd Wargames)

Siarus vs. Denswe 17th-century imagi-nation battle (Wyre Forest Wargames)

Oravais 1808 (Hugo's Heroes)

Getting my Airfix (Hugo's Heroes)

DAK Attack (?)

? (Scimitar Games Group)

Antigonius at bay, Ipsus 301BC (To the Strongest!)

The Eagle Has Landed! (South London Warlords)

The Gloster's Last Stand (All Hell Let Loose!)

Dirshau/Tczew 1627 (The Friends of General Haig)

Operation Desert Storm 1990 (The Friends of General Haig)

Kidnapping Queen Victoria ... Again! (Whitehall Warlords)

Inchon Landings (?)

Muskets & Springfields (Nigel Emson)

Castiglione 5th August 1796 (Caseshot Publishing)

? (Society of Ancients)

? (Real Time Wargames)

The Life and Times of Roderick Spode (Gentleman's Wargames Parlour)

Ntombi River (Hornchurch Wargames Club)

Action on the St. James Road (Tunbridge Wells Wargames Society)

Never mind the billhooks! (Wargames Illustrated)

I Ain't Been Shot, Mum: 'Ham and Jam' 'Ham and Jam' (The Two Fat Lardies)

Chain of Command (The Two Fat Lardies)

Battle of Leuctra 371BC (Jon & Diane Sutherland and Miniature Wargames Magazine)

Eagles and Lions at Carentan (Retired Wargamers Reloaded)

>Bombay Mix Up (Hailsham Wargames Club)

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Any game or group indicated above with a '?' means that I was not able to ascertain what the battle was or who was staging it at the time or from the programme.

Poor, inadequate, or vague signage at wargame shows is one of my pet hates, as is not having someone who will engage passersby in conversation about the game they are looking at or that group that are putting the wargame on. Some groups are excellent at doing this ... which makes it even more irksome that there are still some that don't either see the need or who are actually quite brusque when one asks a question.

Rant over about this topic ... for the last time, I hope!

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One other thing that did annoy me (and it is nothing to do with SALUTE 50) is that my camera battery went on the blink and a number of photographs that I thought that I had taken did not come out. In particular, those of the Continental Wars Society's Fighting at Forbach are completely missing. I did, however, get a copy of their excellent handout:

Please click on the image to see an enlarged version of the handout.

Damn! It was a particularly good game too!

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Other than having to queue to get onto the platform at Custom House station on the Elizabeth Line due to crowding on the westbound platform, (the eastbound one, which I was using to return to Woolwich, was almost empty!) my journey home was both uneventful and quick. This new route has made ExCel even more accessible for me, and I hope to return to SALUTE next year.