WSS - French Books and That

Progress with my Henry Ford-style production of a big refurb batch has been pretty good - never since the golden days of my purchase of Peter Welsh's Napoleonic collection has anything as mind-numbing as this taken place here. All being well, I should have 4 more battalions based and flagged by Wednesday (famous last words).

Before I started this latest batch - two battalions each of Bavarian IR Bettendorf and IR Kurprinz, to be retouched and freshened up. The ultimate Henry Ford touch would be to spray them all black, but I'll try not to do that

Assuming I don't destroy my morale completely in the next few days, the plan would be to do two further, similarly-sized batches, this time Imperialists, over the coming weeks. They may be rather more fiddly, since there are more replacement figures needed, and my research into flags is - how do you say? - doing my head in.

Anyway, all good. Since I will certainly become very peculiar if I paint all day, I am deliberately setting aside non-painting times, so some suitable reading is going on too.

I also have some British troops to refurbish, and I've been dipping a toe into the subject of the French army for the WSS. I have the CS Grant paperbacks on the period, and I've been very kindly sent some copies of uniform plates and old magazine articles, but I thought I should get something just a little heavier, to give me some good background and some reliable detail. My French forces will be starting from zero, so it would be useful to build up a small army for 1703 which can sensibly grow (God willing) into a rather larger army without too much disruption and too many U-turns.

I intend to buy Mark Allen's book, which gets some criticism because it is not The Bible, but it looks very useful anyway. Rene Chartrand is also an obvious source, but I start to get into problems with potential overlap between different publishers (primarily Osprey and Helion), and also there are a lot of books with similar sounding titles.

This is a period for which it is possible to spend money very quickly and find that what you have bought isn't quite what you were looking for. I have obtained titles by Robert Hall and Bruno Mugnai on the Austrian army, but I'm aware that trying to doing anything like this for the French is risky and potentially ruinous. Thus I am starting out at a gentle stroll.

I identified the following as books I could get easily and without huge expense - I'm still dithering about this, so would welcome any comments.

This last title is potentially interesting but, looking at the contents summary, am I to gather that this covers the Line Cavalry etc only up to 1697? Hmmm.

Unless there's a good reason to do otherwise, I might start with a few French units that would be OK at Schellenberg (for example), but could grow into a larger presence. My War of the Spanish Succession is very likely to be almost an imagi-nations set-up, with long-winded and largely imaginary campaigns between Bavaria and Austria to start with. [To quote from the Gallacher Book of Axioms, "If actual history is useful on a particular occasion, then use it, otherwise it's just a luxury (like the sick-bag on an aeroplane journey)".]

Anyway, British and French are a little over the horizon, but could come into sight fairly soon. Thinking and reading about them can't do any harm.

After a late rush of maniacs last weekend, the beach here at the farm has now been closed to the public (well, closed to their cars, which is effectively the same thing), so here's a sort of post-apocalyptic photo - by 9am on Saturday, the only footprints are mine.

Look after yourselves - please keep well. I'm also intrigued by the reported huge demand for dried chick-peas - is this recommended stuff for the fallout shelter? Any good recipes will be welcome.