Roaming

AM visiting Transylvania, staying in the alpine resort of Poiana Brașov, which has a wooden church built in the Maramureș style.

This became popular in Austro-Hungarian lands from the 1500s onwards after the Catholic Habsburgs banned the use of stone in building new Orthodox churches.

Maramureș churches emphasise height

Modest from the outside, such churches tend to be anything but on the inside, and Poiana Brașov's example is no exception.

Small but beautiful

I am playing in a chess tournament, but have had plenty of time to catch up on my reading, including finishing Tim Parks' The Hero's Way - Walking With Garibaldi From Rome To Ravenna, and - for at least the second time - Philip Sabin's Lost Battles - Reconstructing The Great Clashes Of The Ancient World.

Pair of beauties

I nearly chucked the former in a bin after reading Parks' claim on page five that Pope Gregory XVI banned railways from the Papal States because he believed they were invented by the Devil.

Of course no educated man would have thought that - nor many uneducated ones for that matter.

In fact Gregory was anti-railways for similar reasons to the Duke of Wellington - both thought they would upset the social order by increasing the power of the lower classes, eg by increasing mobility, which would lead to higher wages, and by increasing commerce, which again would lead to increased self-sufficiency by those used to depending on their 'betters'.

I am very glad I persevered as the book turned into a riveting mix of travelogue and history as Parks and his wife retrace the route Giuseppe Garibaldi and his republican volunteers took in 1849 while evading multiple foreign and monarchical armies.

Sabin's book probably needs no introduction for dedicated wargamers. Suffice it to say that while I do not agree with all his assertions, especially with regard to how often the losing side in ancient battles had by far the most troops, I do find his book fascinating.

His rules for refighting such battles are very interesting, to say the least, and give the impression of probably being easier to play than they seem at first sight (I certainly hope so, anyway, because I do not find it easy to get my head around all the mechanisms).

But the bottom line with Sabin is he knows how to write, and that is half the battle - pun inadvertent, but left in-  with a book like this.