Influential books 1

 Inspired by Nunkadent over at Horse and Musket wargaming, I thought I might share an influential book and it's background, so no painted figures I'm afraid as I'm just prepping and priming before the Analogue hobbies painting challenge starts on the 20th of this month. 

I ended up with this book, Military Uniforms, the splendor of the past,when I was about 3,it's a hardback colour coffee table book of original prints and paintings of uniforms, thinking about it I suppose in all probability it wasn't given to me,even in the 1970s you wouldn't have given this to a 3 year old ! But as far as I was concerned at the time it was mine and I'd never really thought about it until now, no one ever disagreed about it!

The book really came into it's own because I had a  really nasty skin disease on my hands, if I  put a plaster on my hand it would come off with a layer of skin, eventually I lost all the skin off my hands and one of my earliest  memories is of my mum pulling  my fingernails one by one " it's not going to hurt,okay mum aàah! It's not going to hurt,....." it was for my own good as they were only just hanging on but boy did it hurt! So I couldn't play with any toys(because it would hurt!) but I had a melamine covered board and plasticine which was nice and cooling  and I started making figures based on the images in the book  I was particularly taken by the first page , Lejunes' battle of Borodino,especially the grenadier kicking the live shell into the water and wanted to know who everyone was! It covered uniforms from the French revolution to the start of the first world war. The page of French cavalry and officers also made a big impression on my tiny mind!

Eventually my hands recovered after getting a prescription from a  doctor in the town in Ireland that my mum came from but I was, as my dad pointed out ,cack handed and clumsy. I was taught piano as a way of improving my motor skills, after passing a grade I managed to give that up ! I was also encouraged to make models, my first airfix spitfires and me 109s both ended up in the bin but I persevered (it was more fun than learning piano!) and managed to build an airfix stug 3. I  didn't learn to read until I was 9 but once I did I became a voracious reader and in many ways my wargaming hobby exists to justify my book collection. Purnells history of world war two helped me to read as I flicked through its pages wondering what it all meant. 

Too many books as my wife has pointed out, at one point I had every book Osprey had in print, but I'm better now. It's always interesting to see other people's book collections so I thought I'd post mine,you have to excuse the additional kit that's been moved out of the house for Christmas. 

I hope to have some painted figures on the blog soon,  in the meantime here's some being primed!

All the best Iain