Marine Spears

HAVE completed painting a unit of Egyptian marines armed with spears.

The figures are 10mm from Magister Militum

Because most Egyptians lived close to the Nile, it was from the river that the kingdom was controlled.

This meant marines were the elite of the army until the appearance of chariots, and even then were held in high regard.

My marine spearmen have leather body armour and helmets, as well as shields, which allows them to be classified as having medium armour under Neil Thomas's rules.

Other Egyptian spearmen, and close-order archers, are classified as having light armour.

Marine spearmen with their marine-archer colleagues

The marine spearmen are equipped with short spears which could easily be called javelins.

The spears of regular spearmen (right) are much longer, presumably because marine spearmen could be called on to fight in confined spaces aboard ships and because short spears are easier to handle when assaulting from ship-to-land

Clock This

ONE does not have to be particularly insightful to guess the clock tower (pictured below) in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, is a war memorial.

On time ... despite being blitzed

Except I knew that was unlikely to be true as I had seen a Great War memorial elsewhere in town, so unless the clock tower was for World War Two it had to be for something else.

In fact it is a memorial, and does have WW2 connections, but not in the most-obvious ways.

It was built with money from local businessman George Turner as a memorial to his wife, and was officially unveiled in 1907.

Surrounding buildings, including a hotel, were destroyed in the German blitz of November 1941. The clock tower was badly damaged and was not fully repaired until the 1970s, according to Visit Kenilworth.

August

MOST of St Mary's Abbey in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, is long gone.

But some idea of its former Augustinian grandeur can be gauged from the remains of the gatehouse that controlled access to the grounds from High Street.

Gatehouse ruins

It originally had another floor, and was where the poor of the area gathered for alms.

Among those of a higher social standing who passed through the gatehouse are believed to have been House-of-Lancaster founder John of Gaunt (Ghent) and his grandson Henry V.

Abbey Habit

AM visiting Kenilworth, Warwickshire, for five days, staying in an inn in the old town.

Nearby are the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, which started as an Augustinian priory in the early 1100s.

It expanded over the centuries, being upgraded to abbey status in 1447, only to be confiscated by Henry VIII in 1538 as part of his Dissolution of the Monasteries.

I am in Kenilworth for a chess tournament, the location of which requires me to walk through the abbey ruins and surrounding fields at least twice a day.

Most of the abbey buildings were either dismantled to repair and build other properties in Kenilworth, or slowly fell into disrepair and ruin.

An exception is a stone barn, which may originally have been a hall but later housed cattle.

St Mary's 'barn'

Spring Choice

THE spring catalogue from Pen & Sword has interesting new titles.

Striking cover

Ones that caught my eye include Persia Triumphant In Greece by Manousos E Kambouris (due next month - covers 480-481 BC), Hotspur by John Sadler (biography of Sir Henry Percy) and Prince Eugene Of Savoy by James Falkner (biography of the Habsburg military commander).

All books are discounted if bought direct.

Toys R Me

MY father asked me to get him a new laptop computer, and I transported it in a suitcase to his home in Sussex using tube, train and bus.

I took the opportunity to bring back to London a box marked "Toys 8/1/84."

It turned out to contain mostly 1/32nd scale (approx) cars and such like, but also a sizeable collection of Dinky army vehicles.

A small selection of the non-military vehicles, including Lady Penelope's Fab 1 car from Thunderbirds, a taxi from The Prisoner and a Man From U.N.C.L.E. car

Almost all the vehicles are from the 1960s, with one or two possibly older.

The military selection includes guns that still work, ie can fire matchsticks

I intend donating the non-military vehicles to my local Oxfam shop, which has confirmed it wants toys, but will keep the military at least for a while for possible use with Airfix Battles.

More Chariots

HAVE completed my second unit of Egyptian chariots for my Neil Thomas-compatible biblical project with 10mm Magister Militum miniatures.

Royal chariots