FROM AIRFIX MODELS TO WRITING NOVELS!

Well, I’m not sure whether my books can be equated with novels but I certainly got through many a box of Airfix soldiers and model kits!

Can you remember the boxes of Airfix figures of the 1960’s and 70’s? I used to spend hours setting up numerous figures with my brother only to fire matchsticks out of a toy cannon to knock them down!

But things changed when my dads took me to see the film ‘Waterloo’ with Christopher Plummer as Wellington and Rod Steiger as Napoleon. I absolutely loved it and when dad presented us with the miniature Scot’s Highlanders all painted by cocktail sticks we stopped firing at them! It inspired us to start paining others and iy was this that began the interest in Napoleonic armies.

Researching the uniforms, the differences between parade and campaign, the changes from the start of the French Revolution until Watyerloo, all became important details to emulate in miniature. And then we began researching war game rules… our first set was from a book by Donald Featherstone and we were still using feet and inches!

However, I wanted to find out more: How did armies get from place to place? What did they do to eat, to sleep, for hygiene, to repair worn out and broken items, and what training did they have? My first Napoleonic diary was ‘the Memoir of Sergeant Burgoyne’, the amazing life of a Frenchman that took him to Moscow and back. That started more and more books read and collected to develop a greater understanding of how people lived during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Then came the mysteries: an odd comment, an unusual illustration or painting that caused me to wonder… and that’s how the adventures for Fin and Thomo began in ‘A Dangerous hour for England.’

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