Excellent - some great hair in the photos, plus I spy an Airfix 00/HO English mock-Tudor pub, which is proper period stuff.
As is the journalistic style - local papers always featured this "you'll never believe it, grown men playing with toy soldiers" approach, complete with close-up pics of the principal players, in appropriately geeky pose, pretending to study their own soldiers from a distance of a few inches. At least they would be able to sell a few copies of the paper to the clubs and to the families of the guys involved.
I was present at a public demonstration/refight of Bannockburn in Edinburgh around the same time as these articles, and the staff photographer from the Evening News completely ignored the beautiful hand-sculpted (ex BBC, I think) terrain and Mario Boni's superb soldier collection, since he reckoned the half-tone style newspaper pic of the day would not make anything recognisable out of it. Instead, he chose a young lady with a large chest from the public ranks, and got her to pretend, in close up, that she was interested in a 25mm figure of Robert the Bruce.
True to tradition, the picture appeared, without an article, in the 'Dog Heard Barking' section, captioned 'Bruce beats the Auld Enemy once again in Edinburgh' or similar. Maybe it was right and proper that the decent public were protected from the truth of such perverse goings on - the press have always done a wonderful job.
These old articles are marvellous, Clive - any amount of these will be most welcome - thanks!
DC - yes - Mario the ice cream bloke, of Mr Boni's cafe fame, and the wafer biscuit factory and (I think) a bus company. He had a very serious collection of medieval knights - wonderful. Boni's cafe closed many years ago - don't know what became of Mario.
I thought it looked like the type and punctuation of the Melbourne Truth, a trashy sex and scandal newspaper which died some time late 1970s or later. I left Melbourne in 1981.
It could be Australasian Post (as you suggest), a national publication, but I recall the typeface of Post differently.
Excellent - some great hair in the photos, plus I spy an Airfix 00/HO English mock-Tudor pub, which is proper period stuff.
ReplyDeleteAs is the journalistic style - local papers always featured this "you'll never believe it, grown men playing with toy soldiers" approach, complete with close-up pics of the principal players, in appropriately geeky pose, pretending to study their own soldiers from a distance of a few inches. At least they would be able to sell a few copies of the paper to the clubs and to the families of the guys involved.
I was present at a public demonstration/refight of Bannockburn in Edinburgh around the same time as these articles, and the staff photographer from the Evening News completely ignored the beautiful hand-sculpted (ex BBC, I think) terrain and Mario Boni's superb soldier collection, since he reckoned the half-tone style newspaper pic of the day would not make anything recognisable out of it. Instead, he chose a young lady with a large chest from the public ranks, and got her to pretend, in close up, that she was interested in a 25mm figure of Robert the Bruce.
True to tradition, the picture appeared, without an article, in the 'Dog Heard Barking' section, captioned 'Bruce beats the Auld Enemy once again in Edinburgh' or similar. Maybe it was right and proper that the decent public were protected from the truth of such perverse goings on - the press have always done a wonderful job.
These old articles are marvellous, Clive - any amount of these will be most welcome - thanks!
Tony
Tony,
ReplyDeleteMario Boni - surely not the icecream bloke?
I just realised - I should have waited a day to post this, as today (Wednesday) is Australia Day.
ReplyDeleteClive
DC - yes - Mario the ice cream bloke, of Mr Boni's cafe fame, and the wafer biscuit factory and (I think) a bus company. He had a very serious collection of medieval knights - wonderful. Boni's cafe closed many years ago - don't know what became of Mario.
ReplyDeleteTony
Clive,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the warning. I must admit I prefer my wargamers to wear ties...
I can help a little with the source of the second article "War on a Table"
ReplyDeleteThe publication cites itself as "POST" which was a 1960s-1980's Aussie equivalent of FHM and the modern day lad's mags
The article featuring Geoffrey Blainey can be dated to 1973, based on the publication date of "Causes of War"
Regards
Chris
Chris.
ReplyDeleteI thought it looked like the type and punctuation of the Melbourne Truth, a trashy sex and scandal newspaper which died some time late 1970s or later. I left Melbourne in 1981.
It could be Australasian Post (as you suggest), a national publication, but I recall the typeface of Post differently.