Handbook of the Italian Army, May 1943

A facsimile reprint of the original 1943 issue.  434pp, with black and white illustrations in text.  Light card wraps.  4to.  Covers are a little worn and soiled, gently rubbed at edges with one corner curling slightly.  Upper text block edge dust darkened. The blind embossed stamp of George Gush has been applied to the front cover, the title page and the rear cover, else volume is internally neat. clean, bright and tight.

This copy comes 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.  He founded the Tunbridge Wells Wargames Society in the late 1960s, remaining its chairman until 2007.  A regular contributor to various wargaming and modelling magazines, he authored with Andrew Finch  A Guide to Wargaming (1980) and the well-regarded Wargames Rules for Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries.