Wargaming Books In Schools Project

From Rich Clarke on the Too Fat Lardies blog:

My first contact with wargaming as a hobby came on my first week at senior school when I accidentally picked up a copy of Don Featherstone’s War Games Campaigns. I was absolutely amazed at what I had found and very fortunate that the school library had many of Don’s other wargaming books as well as those by other authors such as Terry Wise and Charles Grant. It was, of course, the start of a long and very happy relationship with the hobby: a hobby which is now both my chosen career and my primary leisure interest. It must therefore be said that I owe much to that chance encounter with a library book.

More recently, a couple of months ago in fact, I was having a conversation with a gentleman who works at a school in Wales who had been asked to form an historical wargaming club for the students. With the passage of time it is hardy surprising that the wargaming books of the 1960′s and 70′s have long since disappeared from school library shelves, and I was very conscious of the fact that any member of school staff undertaking such a worthy project would most likely be lacking much in the way of budget and support materials. Indeed there seem to be few books on wargaming which ever come to the attention of the general public in these days where the internet can mean that niche markets are often invisible to those who are not “in the know”.

[read on here] 

In short? The idea is that those of us who feel some kind of debt of gratitude to school wargaming clubs and libraries may want to donate the price of a copy of Henry Hyde's Wargaming Compendium (which Pen and Sword have agreed to donate for £21), and that schools with a historical wargaming club may wish to apply for a copy.

If you're interested, do go read the full article, and you can contact Rich at toofatlardies@yahoo.co.uk.

I (and very likely our club) will certainly be donating.