New Trotman Book - and a nerdy question

Delighted to say that Jamie the Postie brought a parcel today which turns out to be the keenly-awaited new Spanish Army title by Gerard Cronin and Dr Stephen Summerfield, published by Ken Trotman - this one covers the cavalry, foot guards and artillery of the early Peninsular War.

Haven't had a proper read yet, but it looks just as good as the infantry title. Excellent - very pleased.

Subject 2 - I recently acquired a few of these chaps - this is a British Artillery driver, as you will see, from the Minifigs S-Range series (long, long ago...), and the particular reason I was quite excited to get these, along with their limber horses, is that they give me a chance to further the constant struggle for Creeping Elegance, and replace the draught teams from my British ammunition caissons, which are all Lamming castings at present - nice, but just a touch overscale. Such a change would mean that I could feel much more comfortable parking the caissons near the limber teams. Slight fly in the ointment is that you will notice that this driver has a pistol holster on his right hip. I hadn't really thought about this, but it has been suggested to me that only the drivers in the Rocket Troop had pistols like this, and that the driver castings might be from the S-Range Rocket Troop set.

Now you may feel that I could just brass this out, and claim that it is a well-known fact that caisson drivers wore pistols too, but I thought I would check if anyone knows about this. Any thoughts? It would be a dreadful thing if an army which is already stuffed with errors and anachronisms were to drift any further from the true path. That would not be proper Creeping Elegance at all.

Subject 3 - this was borrowed shamelessly from someone's Facebook page, and I apologise for the low-res picture, but I liked it - seen on a Glasgow baker's van...

Jamie the Postie Is Doing a Good Job

Our friendly postie has been doing stout service in wet conditions once again. Yesterday he turned up with an excellent parcel of S-Range Minifigs Spaniards very kindly sent to me by Matt - all the way from New Zealand (no wonder Jamie looks tired). I knew these were coming, but was delighted to see their condition, and they are painted, and there are enough of the fabled SN1s figures here to produce an 1812 Spanish light infantry battalion with very little work. There are also some 1809-period grenadiers who may well be the start of the first battalion of Granaderos Provinciales, if I can raise some matching friends for them. Thanks again, Matt!

I've been doing well on the donations front of late - I also was recently sent a very nice stash of unpainted SN1s chaps by my mysterious painting friend, Goya, so the 1812 Spaniards are kept bubbling along. I have only very rarely met a free parcel of soldiers which I didn't like.

Jamie also brought me a slightly off-the-wall addition to my non-collection of buses. This is a Commer (Rootes Group, Chrysler...) minibus in the colours of Crosville - the destination is Ynys Station, which was on a now-defunct railway line running south from Menai, in North Wales, through Caernarfon to Afon Wen. The bus companies used to run minibuses like this in country areas which were too sparsely populated for a full coach service; the minibuses also took a role in handling post and parcels. I must say the model (by Oxford Diecast) looks absolutely tiny, but it is 1/76 - the normal HO model railway scale - the same scale as the double deckers I have already in the non-collection, so I guess minibuses must have been a lot smaller than buses. That's probably where they got the name from. [Duh.]

The number plate ending in a B dates this vehicle from around 1964 - any North Welsh readers remember these little chaps? The railway closed in 1964 (thank you, once again, Dr Beeching!), and Crosville provided a bus service to replace it, so the full-size original of this van must have been provided new for the start of that service. I imagine these little buses would operate as feeders for the main bus service - so this would be a local shuttle running passengers into Ynys to connect with the (bigger) Caernarfon/Menai run. Note that the vehicle has a raised roof to allow passengers to stand up. The sheep would not be allowed on the seats, I guess.

Original rail route-map of Menai to Afon Wen service

Fringe Players - tabletop units with an undeserved popularity...

Regimiento de la Muerte, 1809

Most wargames armies have some unit somewhere that turns out to be a bit of an embarrassment – mostly it’s because by rights it shouldn’t be there, and mostly that is because their owner fancied the uniforms, or found the figures cheap at a swapmeet. How many miniature Napoleonic French armies contain a completely inappropriate unit of Mamelukes of the Guard, for example? My own follies in the building up of my Peninsular War armies include a post-1813 line chevaux-legers unit (never set foot in Spain), which I still include in the OOB when it suits – well, they might have appeared (I got some old Garrison figures on eBay); the other was a smashing unit of Les Higgins/PMD Scots Greys – I converted the command figures and everything. This unit still causes me some grief, in retrospect – they were absolutely beautiful, but historically the regiment spent the entire Peninsular War in Britain and – more seriously – they threatened to encourage me to expand my collection to cover Waterloo, with two distinct types of light dragoons and so on. So I sold them on eBay a few years ago, and they went for the starting bid, which was a major heart breaker - not entirely because I am a skinflint, but because I loved them and was insulted.

In this vein, one unit which has always intrigued me is the Regimiento de la Muerte, one of the Spanish “new regiments” raised after the French invasion. These guys appear in just about every known book of uniforms for the Peninsular War, the early use of a British looking uniform is notable, and they became such an iconic Spanish unit (beginning at a time when relatively little was known about that army - by me, certainly) that a lot of tabletop Spanish armies had them. Bueno did a few illustrations of them, though I’m not sure why they have such prominence - Douglas Miniatures, in particular, had only three Spanish Napoleonic figures – a classic line grenadier, with bearskin, and a fusilero and officer of the “Death Regt”. The Death boys will paint up as 1812 blue-uniformed chaps, so they are useful anyway.

I have recently chanced upon a small additional supply of 1812-style S-Range Spaniards, which is very pleasing, and one possibility was that they could be painted up as the Muerte, and thus swell the ranks of my 1809 army, since my 1812 army is probably quite large enough. Problem is that my OOB is based on the battles of Ucles and (a bit) Ocaña, and Muerte were not at either of these places. Out of general interest, I thought I’d check out my JJ Sañudo database, and see what the facts are for Muerte.

Funcken: Who's the guy in the middle, then?

Well now. First thing to note is that their full name was Voluntarios de la Muerte o Victoria, they were raised in 1809, and disbanded 18 months later, and the second thing is that there was a completely different, much more famous light infantry unit named the Voluntarios de la Victoria (this is Volunteers of Victory – nothing at all to do with the city of Vitoria) who were featured in the old S-Range catalogue (SN7s, complete with brimmed hat) and had a long and distinguished war record right through to Toulouse in 1814.

Clonard plate: Left to Right: Voluntarios de la Patria, Leales de Fernando VII,
Santa Fe, La Muerte, Voluntarios de la Victoria

So what of the iconic Muerte, so well known to wargamers? Since it is not lengthy, and might be of interest, this is their full regimental history:

30 Jan 1809 - Single-battalion unit of line infantry raised by D. Francisco Colombo

18 Mar – present at action of Villafranca

20 Mar – official army return describes them as “Regto de la Victoria”, 1 battalion, strength 500 men, under “Capitan” Colombo

22 Mar – 500 men, under Colombo, present at action of Pontevedra

23 Mar – At Vigo, in Galicia – regt formed into 3 battalions, totalling 1000 men; these were built around 1 company of the “Regto de la Victoria”, 1 company of the line Regto de Zamora and 1 company of the Granaderos Provinciales de Galicia, with a substantial intake of volunteer recruits

24 Apr – Action of Santiago; regiment listed as “Regimiento de la Muerte”, consisting of 3 battalions.

26 Apr – at Caldas de Reyes

2 May – attached to La Carrera’s Division on the Miño, at a strength of 1 battalion [where were the rest?]

June – at the Siege of Tuy

7 Jun – 1 battalion present at Battle of Puente Sampayo, with Noroña’s Divn.

30 Jun – return has “Regto de la Victoria o Muerte” at a strength of 1725 men, which seems unlikely.

3 Jul - …they are once again “de la Muerte”, commanded by Colombo.

18 Oct – Battle of Tomames, 1 battalion with the Vanguard Divn, commanded by Mariscal de Campo Martin de la Carrera – 1 killed, 5 wounded, 1 slightly wounded(?).

23 Nov – Action of Medina del Campo, with La Carrera’s Vanguard Divn.

28 Nov – Battle of Alba de Tormes – 148 men present with La Carrera’s Divn.

18 Dec – Regimental cadre(?) marched to Galicia; 135 men transferred to 1^st Voluntarios de Cataluña [which is, in fact, one of the units in my Ucles OOB army].

5 Feb 1810 – Possible that 1^st Vols de Cataluña present at defence of Badajoz.

15 Jun – 1 battalion in Galicia, with Imaz’s “Vanguardia Provisional” division.

1 Jul – regiment disbanded – remaining strength absorbed by the Regimiento de Lobera.

And that, it seems, was that. It would appear that the battalions served separately, and their war service was brief but active – the numbers seem to have fluctuated wildly, though this may just be dodgy record keeping, and I would guess that the bulk of the men in the ranks had little training or experience. I have no wish to disapprove of anyone who served in defence of his native land, but the unit seems to be notable primarily because plates of their uniform survive rather than as a result of any particularly distinguished combat record. I shan’t bother adding them to my 1809 line-up – not least because they didn’t exist until some months after my target OOB.

I find Sañudo’s database a veritable goldmine of information – a great find.

Foot Guards - More is Better

Coldstreams

3rd Foot Guards

I recently obtained via eBay some interim-period Minature Figurines British infantry (poses BN26 & 27) which were a good match - including painting style - for my two battalions of Foot Guards, so I set about taking the opportunity to increase the size of these battalions by some 50% - something I have had a fancy for since not long after I painted up the original units (circa 1973?). I had some adventures with varnish incompatibility, and neither the castings nor the paint job will win any prizes, but this is what my Old School units look like, and it's nice to achieve a low-priority objective.

Martin P asked me for some pics of the enlarged units, and I needed to take some for my in-house catalogue system anyway, so here they are - veterans of my wargames going back a great many years, they have been handled and deployed by a good few friends who are no longer with us, and who would probably have been delighted to have the extra 2 bases available for each battalion from time to time. The command figures are - some of them, anyway - later imports from other manufacturers. I don't know where the guys in the last two rows have been this last 40-odd years, but they fit right in.

I am tired this morning, like a great many Brits, having sat up late watching the General Election coverage on TV. I have nothing at all to say about the results, but, having lived through the build-up over the last few weeks, wondering what on earth ever happened to old fashioned concepts like truth and humility, I am reminded that recently I came upon a favourite old quotation (I was, of course, looking for something else at the time...), and somehow it strikes a chord:

"We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us... but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?"

- J.G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

Another Small Hit for Creeping Elegance

Replacement drummer, 2nd from left, back row...

In a post dating from December 2010, I showed a replacement unit I had acquired, and discussed my concept of Creeping Elegance in wargames armies - the replacing or modifying of odd figures or complete units if they do not please me for some reason or other (even if the reason may seem eccentric or otherwise unreasonable). The occasion, back in 2010, was the recruitment of enough 20mm Miniature Figurines castings to make a battalion of the Brunswick-Oels Jaegers, to replace a unit of Kennington Brunswickers (which, in turn, I had obtained to replace a unit of elephantine modern Minifigs Brunswickers, and so on…). The point of the 2010 replacement was that the MF20 figures are correctly dressed in the long Polrock coat, appropriate to the Peninsular War, whereas the Kenningtons were in short jackets, being intended to represent the Waterloo-period Leibregiment. The tidy-minded reader will understand this, I think...

The only flaw in the new unit was that I couldn't get a completely suitable drummer, so the Kennington drummer stayed on, and has in fact done stout service in subsequent campaigns.

The problem is that the Minifigs 20mm catalogue did not include a Brunswick drummer, for some reason - the range of available infantry for the Black Horde was:

BrN 1 Infantryman on Guard

BrN 2 Infantryman Advancing

BrN 3 Infantryman Firing

BrN 4 Infantry Officer

of which you can see specimens of BrN 2 to 4 in the picture above. The earliest near-match which is suitable is from Minfigs' subsequent S-Range, BrN 6s, and I've been on the lookout for one of these since then.

Well, I got one. Considering the current big push to get a big backlog of limbers and siege paraphernalia painted up, fiddling around with the (cosmetic) upgrade of a single 40-year-old drummer may seem a bit small-time, but such little steps bring satisfaction out of all proportion to their cost or size, especially after such a long-winded hunt. Anyway, here they are, with new drummer inserted, and they are probably as happy as I am about it.

I also included a converted S-Range officer on the right of the picture - if it matters, he is probably Hauptmann Friedrich von Doernberg, who served on General Von Bernewitz's brigade staff in 1812 - he is wearing a rather old-fashioned silver sash, and the distinctive undress cap. The battalion does not carry any colours, because the Brunswickers didn't in the Peninsula, and because they are in any case classified as British light infantry, and my light infantry units are very particular about keeping their colours safe in Lisbon.

Painting - a Little Command Tidying-Up

While assembling some heavyweight shipments of soldiers to go away to be worked on by painters who actually know what they are doing, I've also been doing some fiddling away of my own, finishing off some odd figures that have been in the To Be Painted pile for far too long. None of them is going to win any prizes, but it is satisfying to get a bit of the backlog cleared.

First thing I did was finish off my Peninsular War mule train - it's only taken me about 40 years to get around to having one of these. Pack and draught animals are always a bit of a thankless undertaking; since I always put off painting them, I have usually forgotten that they are mostly just a mass of harness and strapping and bits tied on, all of which requires a bit of care to make them look half-decent.

That was last week. This week I have mostly been finishing off some missing generals for my other French Peninsular Army (which is sort of the Army of the Centre, or the North, or Aragon, or any and all of these as occasion demands). Two of these are Art Miniaturen castings, for the cavalry - nominally Generals Treillard (with the white "division" border to his base) and Maupoint (brown for "brigade), and the other is an old Minifigs 20mm OPC figure, who started life as one of several Marshal Neys which I have, and will be a spare General de Division for the Army of Portugal, or anyone else who needs one.

Here they are - glad to have got them finished - feels like more progress than it really is. Once again, my photographs show the blue uniforms as rather paler than they look in the flesh - my camera has outsmarted me again. [I don't mind so much if my camera is smarter than me - it hurts more when I am out-thought by the electric kettle…]

Since the Aragon role is not comfortable for King Joseph (who is the incumbent command figure for this other army), I am also thinking of having an extra figure for Marshal Suchet - the real motivation here is that I have a very nice little mounted ADC in hussar uniform who will paint up very colourfully as Suchet's sidekick, Captain Gaultier, on the 2-figure C-in-C stand. That's down the road a piece - next painting job for me is a group of British infantry intended for digging trenches in the siege game. These will be armed with shovels and pickaxes, and mounted on the house-standard brown "mud" stands (for sieges). After that there is more artillery equipment, and a refurb job on a very elderly unit of Garrison French chasseurs a cheval, who will need some improvised command. Don't hold your breath.

At Long Last – proper British Peninsular War dragoons

Le Marchant's Brigade - fresh from the painter

I am delighted to introduce the official version of Le Marchant’s Heavy Brigade, circa Spring 1812. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions here previously, I have been looking for figures in the correct uniform in this scale since about 1975. For a while I considered the Hinton Hunt dragoons, but I could never have collected enough anyway, and I excused myself on the grounds that they would be a bit small for my heavy brigade. I rejected Qualiticast for exactly the same reasons. I also had a serious look at the Minifigs S-Range bicorne dragoons, but the uniform is a little early for my purposes. Another, better option was the Falcata boxed set (now OOP) of KGL dragoons, which are perfect apart from the fore-&-aft bicorne hat fitted with chinscales, which was a local eccentricity of the KGL. Briefly, there was also the NapoleoN version of the KGL boys, which were lovely figures, but - like everyone else - I was snoozing during the short time they were available.

3rd Dragoons

4th Dragoons

5th Dragoon Guards

My final version, therefore, is a hybrid – Falcata men with S-Range heads, on Falcata campaign-order horses. This has been an extended labour of love, and it is only fitting that I commissioned Lee to paint them to his usual high standard, so I am really very pleased indeed to have them ready and in The Cupboard.

My previous (post-1812, helmeted) regiments have moved into the Allied Odd-Bods box, while I decide what to do with them. They served as stopgaps for 40 years, so some respect is due.

The Scales of Injustice? – figure sizes, yet again

This is going to get me dangerously close to obscure worlds such as railway modelling, of which I know nothing, and where I am likely to get slapped down mightily if I use the wrong terminology, or offend the international standards (whether they are universally obeyed or not).

I’ve always been puzzled by the mapping of modelling scales like 20mm, 25mm, 28mm, 40mm and so on against  the more intuitively scientific (and understandable) concepts like 1/72, 1/64, 1/300 and similar. I have moaned on about this at some length before, so will try not to waste too much time going over the same ground.

Basic problem is that figure manufacturers call visibly unequal figure scales by the same name. If we discount the possibility of different sized millimetres being in use simultaneously (although it might happen), the matter boils down to

(a) which bit of the man do you measure? – there are disciples of soles-to-scalp (i.e. how high is a figure), sole-to-eye (which sounds like a convention, but which generates a lot of passionate support – most of the lectures I get from the bearers of wisdom seem to follow this doctrine) and even bottom-of-base-to-eye (which just seems plain daft).

(b) (and this makes a bit of a nonsense of (a)) how tall is this man anyway?  

In response to a previous post, I was directed to this diagram from Jack Scruby, no less, which would appear to be authoritative unless you happen to disagree with it.

What has brought this to mind of late is that I have been involved in purchasing and studying some of the old Hinchliffe 20mm equipment range – the non-WW2 bits of which vanished without trace many years ago. It says on the packet that these are manufactured to a scale of 4mm to the foot, which is near enough 1/76 scale, which is the OO model railway scale. I’m not sure, but I think this scale is widely used for WW2 models. 4mm to the foot would make a 6-foot man 24mm tall, and a 5-foot man 20mm, so where does the “20mm” nomenclature come in?

As far as Hinchliffe are/were concerned, I also have some of their 25mm artillery range, and in there is an information sheet, which explains that their 25mm range uses a scale of 4.75mm to a foot (which I reckon is 1/64), and goes on to state that the human figures in this range are designed to represent men 5 foot 8 inches tall, which means that (assuming Hinchliffe’s manufacturing standards complied with their own house rules), those strange ectomorphic soldiers that turned the wargaming market upside down in the early 1970s must have been 27mm from sole to scalp. Does this mean 25mm to the eye? – whatever it means, this is the official lowdown on how Hinchliffe interpreted “25mm”, and we know for a fact that this is different from what Miniature Figurines and Les Higgins were doing. The information sheet I have, by the way, appears to date from September 1971 – I’m not sure if it is still the same sheet which goes out with the 25mm equipment today – this range, of course, is still in production.

OK – back to Hinchliffe’s 1/76 “20mm” men – assuming the same logic applied, a 5 foot 8 man would be around 22.5mm tall – which is consistent with Hinton Hunt and current Kennington figures – would he be 20mm to the eye? Could it be that the eye-measurers have been right all along?

I don’t buy many plastics – I’m not at all hostile to them, but I have grown accustomed to not buying them, to being concerned about paint-shedding, and discouraged by the proportion of useable wargame poses in a box, considering these are no longer the pocket-money option they once were. At this point someone may feel urged to miss the point of my post, and put me straight about the merits of plastics – please don’t bother – I’ll take your word for it. Honestly, I will.

The relevance of plastic figures here is that 1/72 is the universal standard – how well it is observed and how the manufacturers compare is not the point. No-one can argue about what 1/72 means in mathematical terms, and thus, over the years, I have got used to regarding my Napoleonic collection as being “approximately 1/72” – some  of my figures are described by the makers as 20mm (Hinton Hunt, Kennington, early Lammings, early Garrison, very early Minifigs), some of them are old 25mm (Higgins, Scruby, some S-Range), from before the world got bigger, and some of them are explicitly 1/72 (NapoleoN, Falcata and Art Miniaturen). My in-house rule is that if the hats match, they are the same size. Ideally, my chaps should be around 22-23mm tall (without headgear), though a taller man might be OK if his hat looks right!

25mm Soldiers, as purveyed by Hinchliffe (L) and Scruby

I have now confirmed that the much sought-after 1/76 Hinchliffe artillery are a tad underscale for plastic figures, while their 1/64 cousins are visibly too big. Confusingly, considering the precision which went into the research and sculpting, Hinton Hunt artillery appear to be even smaller than the Hinch 20s, so maybe there was an internal inconsistency there too.

I’ve always tended to avoid Newline 20mm figures – too small for me, though they are lovely – I have no idea what the official scale is, but I have it on good authority that some of their artillery pieces are a good fit with Hinton Hunt, for example, which is useful, but, again, a bit confusing. RSM and Irregular have an even smaller interpretation of 20mm, but at this point I am getting well outside my area of knowledge.

It looks as though my target Napoleonic recruit is somewhere in a ball park between 1/72 and 1/76, with guns and wagons to match. And the devil take the decimal places.

The Headless Horseman

…and other mysterious goings-on.

Well you see, Clive was interested in mounted colonels for some of his British infantry, and one of the possibilities was the fellow I have pictured at the top of this post, who had been in my Napoleonic Command spares box for a few years.

I’d never quite identified this figure. At first glance it looks like a Hinton Hunt OPC, but there’s nothing like this in the catalogue. Disregarding oddities such as Der Kriegsspieler, my personal rule-of-thumb for this sort of thing is that if it looks like Hinton Hunt (especially in the horse department), then there is a good chance that it is actually a very early Minifigs 20mm piece. In fact someone had, I think, told me that this was a Minifig, and by deduction it was probably BNC5 – “Line Infantry Mounted Colonel”. Thus I had assumed this was what it was, and it lived in the spares box in this unofficial role.

I was never very taken with the paint job, and I was suspicious about the unconvincing epaulettes, so I decided to clean it up a bit and see what it was. Into the bleach it went, but bleach couldn’t handle a very thick coat of red undercoat, so it required a Nitromors bath. That shifted the red paint all right, but I was a bit shaken to find that it also shifted his head.

It was a conversion.

I should have thought of that – the Nitromors had simply taken out the glue which held his head on. At this point I was actually laughing out loud – there is something very silly about an elderly fellow like me looking so closely at epaulettes on a 20mm tin soldier, and missing the blindingly obvious. I really must get out more.

Having had a quick look around, I think it is actually a Hinton Hunt OPC Austrian General (AN102 – picture borrowed from the Hinton Hunter), with a British infantry head attached. If anyone recognizes the figure, or if you did the conversion, or if you disagree with my ideas about it, please shout.

Hinton Hunt AN102 - thanks to The Hinton Hunter blog

Good fun. Not sure what to do with him. The lack of epaulettes might make him suitable for a Spanish general, but the single-breasted jacket might not work – I’ll think about it.

Subject 2 – On Being Dead

I was happily reading Pierre le Poillu’s account of his visit to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, when I suddenly remembered that I am buried there. There are, of course, some 1 million other people buried there, so I can’t feel too bad about it if he did not visit my tomb. Out of idle curiosity I had a look in Wikipedia to see which famous people share my final resting place, and was a little upset to find I am not listed.

It would be ungracious to make too much of a fuss about this, but I would remind the reader that I was a prominent general in the Napoleonic Wars (rising to the rank of General of Division – I would have risen higher if I hadn’t blotted my record by being a Jacobin and a Republican, opposed to the Empire), I was wounded 15 times during those wars – the last time being outside the walls of Hougoumont at Waterloo, and I subsequently retired from military service to become leader of the liberal opposition in the French Chamber of Deputies. I became a noted orator before succumbing to apoplexy at the tender age of 50.

Naturally I would not wish to talk myself up here, but there are some pretty cheesy C-List celebs on the official tour of Père Lachaise – actresses and such. If you are in Paris, I hope you have the opportunity to drop in and say hello. My tomb is a bit overdone for my own taste, but it is easily spotted, and I appreciate the sentiment that created it. As you will see, they did not wish me to get out of here in a hurry.

Hi-ho, hi-ho – plus Stephen and Buddy

…it's off to work we go

The prospect of getting back to some siege gaming (an activity which – strangely – was actually discouraged by my Peninsular War campaign) has got me sifting through the boxes of not-quite projects to get some more engineering and supply units finished off.

First hit was an easy one – a little group of British infantry pioneers, individually based. Right away, I have to admit that these are not really a siege-type unit – there will be proper sappers and miners for that later on, with the regulation brown bases. These fellows exist primarily because it seems like a good idea, and there is already in existence a French equivalent. Next admission is that I don’t actually have any rules to allow the pioneers to influence the game, but now that I have a unit for each side I am more likely to do something about that.

They are, as you will see, from Minifigs “interim” range – the one after the S-Range and before the current range of clinically obese chaps. There isn’t much available in metal in this scale. My French sapeurs are a mixture of Kennington and Falcata castings, which gives some variety of poses. I had intended to use S-Range Brits for the pioneers, but the S-Range pioneer is a disappointingly weedy looking sculpt, who looks as if he is struggling with his axe, and might have trouble sharpening a pencil. So it’s the intermediates – these are BN55, vintage circa 1974?

Since this is an informal collective (pool?) of bods from various regiments, they have mixed facings. If you want someone to lose that gate for you, or to help with building a bridge, these could be just the fellows. I regret that there are no beards on show, but the castings have no beards. I tried painting a beard on, but the effect was funnier than I had hoped.

Subject 2: Stephen Fry

Of late, I have given up trying to paint soldiers with the TV on. Wearing my painting glasses, I cannot see the TV, never mind work out what is on the screen, so these days I listen to music while painting. This weekend it has been the usual mixed bag – Mississippi John Hurt (brilliant, but after 20 minutes it all sounds the same, and is always in the same key, which doesn’t help), Buffalo Springfield (disappointingly dated, and not as good as I remembered), Herbie Hancock (excellent – I played River, which is an album of Joni Mitchell’s music, with guest vocals provided by numerous worthies, including Leonard Cohen and – erm – Joni Mitchell), Cassandra Wilson (terrific, and sexy in a slightly weird way), and a boxed set of Mendelssohn’s symphonies. Intuitively, it seems odd that Buffalo Springfield seemed more dated than Mendelssohn, but hey.

One of the things I did not watch on the TV was Stephen Fry’s QI show, which makes me decidedly uncomfortable. If you haven’t seen it, it consists of a sort of bogus panel game, which is entirely designed to perpetuate the legend that SF is the cleverest fellow on the planet. The panel members do not always sit easily in their role as stooges, but the show can be very amusing nonetheless.

It’s hard to put my finger on why Stephen’s public image grates with me. I actually quite like him – he is unpredictable and witty and frequently endearing. I just get very fed up with the constant force-feeding of his TV packaging as a National Treasure – fed up in the same way that I became fed up with the constant overexposure of David Jason and the late John Thaw (great talents, both) on British TV in past years.

No amount of TV is going to make me accept that Mr Fry is an intellectual, or a great scholar, or Oscar Wilde, or Dr Johnson. My attention is limited – I will find it more convenient if he remains a comedian, an occasional writer and – to be brutal – a TV personality. I am happy with him in that more digestible role.

I hasten to add that I have huge affection for the old Jeeves & Wooster series he did with Hugh Lawrie, which remains one of the very brightest gems of British television in my humble opinion. In fact, now I come to remember that I have an Amazon gift voucher which someone very kindly sent me for Christmas, I must have a look to see what boxed sets of DVDs are available for that series. While I’m at it, I should check out what there is of the old black-and-white Tony Hancock shows. You have to be careful with this – it would be awful to be confronted with the fact that – like Buffalo Springfield on Saturday – these shows are not as good as I think they were. Tricky stuff, nostalgia.

One of the very strangest bits of Stephen Fry was when they sent him on a trip to America – touring in a London cab. His visit to Chicago included an interview – in the cab, naturally – with Buddy Guy, the great urban blues legend. The idea of Fry empathizing with Buddy’s recollection of what life was like for an impoverished black musician in 1950s Chicago is bizarre. I suspect that they could have achieved a comparable amount of empathy by getting Stephen to travel round Chicago in his taxi with a grizzly bear – he is affable and enthusiastic and correct, but these worlds never quite collided, did they?