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'A gaping silken dragon,/Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God./We, not the City, are the Empire's soul:/A rotten tree lives only in its rind.'

Thursday 13 December 2012

One John Curry...

... there's only one John Curry. Or, to remain in keeping with the overall tone of this blog, perhaps I should paraphrase Dr Watson, 'Curry, you are a benefactor of the wargaming race.'

Most readers of these ramblings will be aware of John Curry's marvellous 'The History of Wargaming Project', in which all those great works of yesteryear are being returned to our grateful hands, thereby saving us from the grasping clutches of the second hand dealer (Holmes and Watson come to mind again - the beginning of 'The Empty Room'). I have bought a number of Mr Curry's edited reprints, but today an absolutely marvellous one dropped through my letter box:


Oh delight! Oh joy! It is as if a papyrus saved from the burning of the library at Alexandria had been returned to us. If you haven't already, then rush and buy a copy.

On a more prosaic note, the Minitanks Mobelwagen has received its paint:


Needs crew really, but none of my reserve of 1/76 giants will do.

14 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Good idea - I didn't know of these neat little figures. But the right ones seem a bit difficult to come by. I'm also concerned that I'll like them too much...

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  2. I have the 1972 original of the Terry Wise book beside me on the shelf.It has been annotated with hand written fold out charts for acw and other gaming by m in the early 1970s.
    I agree with you re John Curry and his splendid efforts to keep these tome available.
    Great paint job by the way...
    best wishes
    Alan

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    1. If you hear strange noises in the night, it's probably me indulging in a bit of breaking and entering, and trying to find your wargames books ... while changing between reading and 'seeing' specs!

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  3. I was not aware of Mr Curry's project; what an excellent endeavour. I assume you have seen The Courier's "Timeline Of The Historical Miniatures Wargaming Hobby" which charts the appearance of most of the relevant publications. I was particularly interested in the great War Game Digest rift of 1962 between Messrs Featherstone and Scruby:

    http://www-personal.umich.edu/~beattie/timeline2.html

    Cheers, Dave

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    Replies
    1. Cheers, Dave. I didn't know about The Courier - excellent, another reason for not developing my career! I'm no historian of wargaming, but I had picked up that 'The Don' could be quite an Alpha male type gamer.

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  4. I'm somewhat fascinated by the retro-wargames field, despite having joined the hobby at the end of the 70's, I was totally unaware of what had gone on a few mere years before this. Thanks to Dave for the timeline!

    More power to Mr Curry too, for his efforts!

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    1. I know what you mean. Although I had my first Airfix (ACW, Union Infantry) around the age of 6 in the mid 1960s, and was really keen on the whole thing in the early 1970s, my only sources of information were Featherstone's War Games from the local library, and Airfix Magazine. So, I was pretty ignorant of the titanic struggles that were going on. I didn't return until the mid - late 1980s, and still stuck with the Featherstone approach, plus Charge!, having bought Terry Wise's reprint in 1986. Curry is, indeed, a boon. Deserves some kind of wargamers' MBE for services etc.

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    2. The first wargames book I ever got my hands on was Advanced Wargames (1969) by Donald Featherstone. I think I must've had it on almost permanent renewal at the local library for about 2 years. The first wargames book I ever owned (and still have) is a tiny booklet (63 small pages) called Discovering Wargames by John Tunstill, also from 1969. A quick scan of the bookcase reveals no fewer than 10 Featherstone titles, including my very own Advanced Wargames (unfortunately minus the lovely dust jacket of the original). I can also muster tomes by quite a few of the old guard: Barker, Grant, Quarrie, Young, Wise, Gush, et al...

      Cheers, Dave

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    3. Thought I had lost these links. My favourite set of classic book covers:

      http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/classic_books_01.htm
      http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/classic_books_02.htm
      http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/classic_books_03.htm
      http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/classic_books_04.htm

      Apologies for cluttering up your blog with URLs but the navigation on the above site is not great. Hope they are of interest!

      Cheers, Dave

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  5. Preiser has weapons crews for this sort of thing in the ROCO scale Stephen. Looking good so far.

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    1. Thanks, Paul. I've been scouting out the Prisers on and off today, and I really like some of their 'off duty' poses. I will, undoubtedly, end up parting from more of my hard earned.

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  6. The History of Wargaming Project is a lot of fun, getting books back into print, conducting research, getting professional miliary games published and even better finding unpublished material. Don Featherstone lost book on wargaming commando operations is almost ready to go to print. Just getting Stuart Asquith to write the foreword.

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    1. Excellent news! You do a fine job, and it is much appreciated. A lot of the material you've reprinted was just impossible to find, or only existed as crumbling paperbacks going for a song. Well done, sir!!

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