Archives for History - Page 7
Slouching in the Undergrowth by Jack Swaab [Book Review]
Slouching in the Undergrowth: The Long Life of a Gunner Officer by Jack Swaab My rating: 4 of 5 stars I bought Slouching in the Undergrowth because I'd previously read and enjoyed Field of Fire, the author's wartime experiences. Slouching in the Undergrowth covers pretty much all of Jack Swaab's extraordinary life. Slouching in the Undergrowth There's a fair amount on his childhood, first in Sydenham and later at boarding school in the South West. Jack also tells us of his time as an undergraduate that doesn't flatter himself much. I guess when you get into your nineties you don't need to worry so much what people think of what you did as a callow teenager. There is some good social history on pre-WW2 Britain from the perspective of reasonably well to do children. You can see how experience in…
Secret Hitler from Kickstarter has arrived
I backed Secret Hitler on Kickstarter a little while back, and it finally arrived! I'm really looking forward to playing it, but it might be a while as it is a five to ten player game. Secret Hitler - what's in the box? Here are a handful of pictures of what is in the box. The box, two of the three double sided tracking boards, the places for the President and Chancellor, voting cards and policy tokens. The back of the Chancellor's placard, with a summary of the relevant game rules on the back. It's sitting on the liberal party's board, these are all identical on all three game boards. On the other side are the fascist policy tracker boards that depend on the number of players. The back of the President's placard. As you can see the President has…
Writing Good Living History Characters for Re-enactors
This second post in the living history series is on creating good living history characters. The previous blog post was on the five steps for scripting living history events, of which creating your living history characters is the fifth step. Cooking snacks for soldiers at a living history event Living history events are a sort of promenade theatre with a lot of improvisation. Re-enactors are often mingled with the public, and many will be answering questions one to one. So living history characters need to be more robust than if you were writing for another medium. Here's what you need to do: Outline the scenario Work out what characters you need for the scenario Provide background for each character Define limits for improvisation Cast people as your main characters & brief them 1. Outline Your Scenario Mass-produced colour photolithography on paper…
Scripting Living History Events for Re-enactors – in Five Steps
It has been quite a while since I was last involved in scripting living history for an event. It has also been a while since I attended one, but I spent this weekend at the ECWS living history site at Newport Pagnell. The ECWS living history has come on a long way over the last few years. There is an excellent small town feel to it with a load of talented people showing a wide range of skills and aspects of 17th century life. This is how it should be. The next stage in the evolution is scripting living history cameos so that there is a hook for the public to learn more. About a decade ago the Fairfax Battalia, now sadly gone, saw this and ran a series of living history events. I was lucky enough to be able to script some…
Education – Using Somme War Diaries
This post is an attempt at education using war diaries to show on what officers did and how that affected casualties at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. This, and its follow ons, was inspired by a Twitter conversation after Friday's post. I was asked about whether other ranks were sacrificed at the Battle of the Somme by officers. It was a form of Alan Clarke's fallacy Lions led by donkeys. Here's the tweet. There are three parts to answering the questions. What did officers do in WW1 battles? What are the relative numbers of officers and other ranks in WW1 infantry battalions? (and how did this change as the battle progressed?) What do the casualties tell us? Method of Education For the first question I went back to my WW1 bookshelves. There are a few relevant tomes. I also drew on…