War Games through the Ages, Volume IV – 1861-1945

First edition, first impression.  240pp, with charts in text and a few monochrome photographic plate illustrations. Black cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on the spine.  8vo.  Some traces of dustiness to boards and upper text block edge, very faint spotting on remaining edges.  Previous owner’s details boldly inked on the front free endpaper else internally neat, clean, bright and tight.  In its original glossy, illustrated dust jacket, not price clipped, a little toned and lightly bumped on edges, tiny kick at the head of the spine, slightly shelf worn.

The fourth and final instalment of Donald Featherstone’s classic series on vintage tabletop wargaming, covering the American Civil War,, Unification of Italy, the Rise of Prussia and the Franco-Prussian War, The Spanish American War of 1898, the Boer War, World War One, The Spanish Civil War etc., with appendices on the availability of wargames figures, suggested reading etc.

This copy from the collection of the late George R P Gush.  Gush  was head of history at West Kent College but is perhaps better remembered as a key contributor to the development of early wargaming, and as an active wargamer especially in Renaissance wargames.  His Renaissance Armies (1975) has become a classic work on the topic.  Founder of the Tunbridge Wells Wargames Society in the late 1960s, Gush remained its chairman until 2007.  A regular contributor to various wargaming and modelling magazines, he co-authored  A Guide to Wargaming (1980) and the well-regarded Wargames Rules for Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries.