Top Read

EDITH Durham's High Albania is a riveting account of months of travel through remote parts of the Balkans in 1908.

Her book is apparently still regarded as an authoritative source for understanding old customs of the remoter mountainous regions.

A fascinating insight into a disappeared world

These customs included blood feuds, which were frequently a deadly business but had 'honourable' rules, one of which was that shooting was not allowed when a household was entertaining guests.

Accordingly Edith felt safe one evening in a village where, unable to stay with the local priest, who was away, she and her companions were invited to overnight with a family currently involved in a major blood feud over a broken engagement.

"The young man who had invited us had shot a man of the girl's family, and cleansed it [his honour]; now the family of the slain man hungered for the blood of him or his.

"He looked on the situation with grim satisfaction, for he knew he had acted righteously.

"I lay and listened to the tale while three men, intent on feeding us sumptuously, slaughtered a kid on a hurdle by the doorstep, and were busy cleaning and quartering it.

"Just as they were bloody to the elbows - dan! rang a rifle and phew-ew sang a bullet close over our heads from behind the corner of the wall.

"Down fell the flaying-knives; the three snatched Martinis [rifles] that hung handy from the stone brackets by the door, and dashed off in hot pursuit.

"A yell of laughter followed at once. A neighbour with a strong sense of humour had fired, just for a joke, to make them jump!"

There is much more of this, and I found the book so entertaining that I sped through the almost-200 pages on a recent 10-day holiday, leaving me with nothing to read for the rest of the trip!

100 Years Ago

HINDOO Holiday - An Indian Journal is a former army captain's account of a five-month spell as secretary to a maharajah in the mid-1920s.

The book thinly disguises the maharajah, his servants and the British residents, but they were easily identified when the book was published in 1932.

A vanished world

Nothing much really happens, but the tales are charming, or "radiantly delightful," as Evelyn Waugh put it, provided you can stomach the overt pederasty.

Early Promise

FOLLOWING on from reading Peter Fleming's One's Company, I got stuck into a charity-shop find, Winston Churchill's My Early Life.

An Eland reprint, picked up for £2.49 in Oxfam's Bethnal Green Road outlet, London E1

It is an old-fashioned tale of derring-do that reads like an over-the-top Boy's Own tale, and yet it is all true, or, at least, is Churchill's version of the truth.

From skirmishes in India, to a cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman, to fighting Boers (and escaping from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp), Churchill did it, and he tells the stories with a verve that makes for intoxicating reading.

I hope to read much more by Churchill, curtesy, more than likely. of Amazon.

Vanishing Interest

I HAD quite high hopes for Norman Davies' Vanished Kingdoms - The History Of Half-Forgotten Europe.

It had rave reviews on the back cover, although perhaps I should have paid more attention to the fact that the reviews were from mainstream newspapers and magazines rather than specialist history publications.

The book starts interestingly enough with an account of a Visigothic kingdom in what is now south France.

But by the time Davies reaches Byzantium - called here Byzantion - he seems to lose interest, covering 1,100+ years of the new Roman capital in 13 pages.

I also lost interest soon afterwards, but I will keep the book - it has a decent index, and could easily come in handy as a reference source.

Nice idea - shame about the contents

Three In One

SOME 20 years ago I received, as an incentive, I believe, for renewing my membership of the Pike & Shot Society, a modestly sized booklet of Renaissance military texts.

Inside were extracts from three publications: a diary of the French 1684 siege of the city of Luxembourg, the London Gazette of July 1705, and letters from a junior officer in Marlborough's army (whether any of these date from the Renaissance is a moot point).

The fact it has taken me two decades to get round to reading the booklet suggests, correctly, that the subject matters were not of great interest to me.

Nevertheless, having at last opened it and dived in, I am glad I did, and I finished it, which is more than I can say for some books.

Handsome cover - fairly interesting contents

Travel Classic

ROBERT Byron's The Road To Oxiana has everything that I usually do not like.

It is described on the back cover as "poetic," which often is another way of saying flowery and overblown, it was written architecture of the areas he passed through at the forefront, and the author had questionable morals (but then don't most of us?).

Nevertheless it is hard to turn down the chance to read a travel book that has been so highly praised, and I am glad I bought it.

Oxiana is Byron's name for the region, better known, at least to me, as ancient Bactria, around what is now called the Amu Darya river but was earlier known as the Oxus.

He spent 10 months in 1933-4 traversing the area and further afield, with the names of the places he visited having great historic and romantic appeal, including Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad and Persepolis.

I can do no better than to quote from the reviews of other travel writers: "beyond criticism," "humour spans every genre," "most learned and most entertaining," "written with such charm and gaiety."

A classic, but I have to confess the striking photo on the Penguin paperback helped convince me to make the purchase - for once, at least, it was possible to judge a book by its cover

Effort-less

IT may not seem that way, but I have been keeping up with my reading - it is my reviewing that has fallen behind.

Accordingly I intend to catch up with some short reviews of recently read books.

First up is military historian Sotirios Drokalos's The Wars Between The Greeks & The Carthaginians.

The book is published by Pen & Sword, and comes with all the usual faults of that publisher, namely using spellcheckers instead of competent proofreaders, and more-or-less dispensing with any attempt at editing.

But the company has come up with a new - at least to me - faux pas in apparently dispensing with a translator and instead using an early version of Google Translate.

All these add up to a frustrating read, for example on page four:

Carthage established its presence first in the Balearic Islands and specifically in Ebusus (present-day Ibiza), which it has since been used as a Carthaginian base

On page 82:

An important role in those successes of Dionysius played his alliance with the Gauls

On page 95:

However, on reaching Carthage, he was severely blamed, and was driven to suicide, according to Carthaginian morals. Moreover, his fellow citizens were so enraged with him for the fact that, as they believed, he had missed an excellent opportunity to subdue Syracuse that after executing him, they also beheaded his corpse.

On page 126:

Nevertheless, Agathocles had to attack, as his supplies were running out, and his troops suffered from a lack of supplies.

Three defences are said to be "impregnable" and another "unassailable," we learn of the work of "gunsmiths," are told of an "oil tree" and meet Carthage's "Holy Company" (Sacred Band is meant).

Enough of the irritating negatives - what about the positives?

There are plenty, and not surprisingly as the west Mediterranean before the dominant rise of Rome has an exciting history.

If you have read the ancient sources, Drokalos is not really telling anything new, but he tells it in a fast-paced and gripping way that helped me easily speed through the book.

I would like to have seen fuller descriptions and discussions of the major battles (and especially a map or two), but there is only so much that can be included in this type of general study.

It makes a pleasing addition to my library, especially as I received a discount (I cannot recall how much) by pfre-ordering the £22 hardback.

Recommended ... with reservations

Terror Trek

IF you think Russia's targeting of civilian areas in Ukraine is surprising, you shouldn't - it is par for the course.

The country used the same tactics, only more so, in wars against separatist Chechnya at the end of the last century.

Then in 2004 Muslim terrorists, still fighting for Chechen independence, took over a school in predominantly Christian North Ossetia-Alania.

Cold-blooded murders followed, at which point Russian security forces stormed the buildings, resulting in the deaths of more than 300 hostages.

One journalist covering the Beslan school siege was Tom Parfitt, a Moscow-based correspondent who was left traumatised by what he saw.

His reaction, admittedly four years later, was to walk through the Caucasus region where all the killing took place, and was still going on in a low-key way.

The result is High Caucasus - A Mountain Quest In Russia's Haunted Hinterland

No doubt the point of the book - and the walk - was not to entertain, but rather to be informative, and was perhaps mostly written as a form of therapy.

Whether it turned out to be therapeutic for the author, I do not know, but the book taught me a lot about what is going on in the Caucasus, and how much the history of the region, including tsarist conquests, are important to the present inhabitants.

The book is also entertaining.

Great Brazilian

BACK in October I told how much I enjoyed News From Tartary, an account of a 3,500-mile journey across China and into India undertaken in 1935 by Peter Fleming, older brother of James Bond-author Ian.

The following month I ordered two more books by the elder Fleming, the first of which, Brazilian Adventure, I recently finished.

It tells of a failed expedition to discover the fate of an explorer who went missing in the Amazon jungle in 1925.

Brazilian Adventure - failed search, but successful writing

The book was highly praised - "extraordinarily good," Sunday Times; "crammed with sound observation," JB Priestly - and I certainly do not demur.

Fabulous Book

I HAVE been quite fortunate recently with my choice of reading material, and that is very much the case with William J Hamblin's Warfare In The Ancient Near East To 1600 BC.

The subtitle of Holy Warriors At The Dawn Of History might have put me off if I had noticed it.

But the author did not use the book as a vehicle for pushing a wacky theory.

Rather he pointed out that much warfare in the early days of history, and in pre-historical times for that matter, was justified on religious grounds, with kings claiming to be acting on behalf of, and with the aid of, various gods.

500+ pages of brilliantly informative and exciting history

Hamblin, who died in 2019, was associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, Utah.

The book has taught me much about early warfare in Mesopotamia, with warring city states such as Ur and Kish.

In my ignorance I had thought such conflicts would be dull to read about, my views perhaps overly influenced by the clumsiness of early chariots. I now know better.

His coverage of later times was much more familiar to me, although again I learnt plenty.

The book was published in 2006, but the only parts that seem a little dated to me, admittedly a layman, concern his coverage of the Hyksos 'invasion' of Egypt. But that is a small part of a much greater achievement.

North Men

ONE of my best recent charity-shop finds is The Men Of The North, which I bought from Oxfam at Greenwich in November for £4.99.

The subtitle, The Britons Of Southern Scotland, gives a better clue as to the subject.

As most people know, before the arrival of Angles, Jutes, Saxons, etc in what was to become England, most of Britain was occupied by people whose descendants were to be restricted by the Germanic immigrants to Wales and Cornwall.

But what is less well-known is that as well as in Wales and Cornwall, there were petty kingdoms of the 'Welsh' in what is now northwest England and southwest Scotland.

These are The Men Of The North, to be differentiated from the other men of the north in those days, namely the Picts and, in increasing numbers from Ireland, the Scots.

As Tim Clarkson shows in his book, the picture was complicated, the sources are limited and not always reliable, and the archaeological evidence is by no means conclusive.

I knew about the Ancient Britons, as the Celtic tribes are often called, and their kingdom of Strathclyde.

But I really knew very little, and I did not know how intricate the various alliances were, and indeed that there were many petty realms I had never heard of, let alone studied.

I was also not aware, or at least not as aware as I should have been, that much of the fighting was not ethnic - Britons also fought Britons, Scots fought Scots, and proto-English fought proto-English.

Great read

The book has inspired me to hunt down and buy a copy of the famous boardgame Britannia.

I can hardly wait to watch history unfold on my tabletop.

Border Interests

COLIN Thubron's The Amur River - Between Russia And China received high praise from people who should know.

"Top Form - full of insights," was the verdict of Monty Python performer-turned travel writer Michael Palin, while travel writer-turned historian William Dalrymple called the book, published in 2021, "a masterpiece."

Travels on a border separating two historical superpowers

I would not argue with those assessments, and indeed believe the book is up there with Thubron's other classics, Mirror To Damascus, The Hills Of Adonis, Journey Into Cyprus, Among The Russians, Behind The Wall: A Journey Through China, The Silk Road: Beyond The Celestial Kingdom, In Siberia and Shadow Of The Silk Road.
A discordant note on The Amur River was struck by The New York Times, which accused Thubron of failing to make "connections of any sort between the world through which he travels and the one in which we live as if the places he explores exist on some other planet."
But that surely misses the point that readers are quite capable of making their own connections, without having them spoonfed or being told how to think.

By the way, Thurbon fans might spot a glaring omission from my list of his classic travel writings - 2011's To A Mountain In Tibet.

I have seen it in bookshops many times, but somehow mistakenly thought I had it.

Having checked my shelves, I find that is not the case, so writing this short review has helped me in that I have remedied the situation by ordering a copy through Amazon.

Hoping For A Hat-Trick

I RECENTLY finished reading another great find in a charity shop, Peter Fleming's News From Tartary.

If the author's name sounds vaguely familiar, it is because he was the elder brother of James Bond writer Ian Fleming.

£2.25 from a branch (cannot recall which) of Oxfam

The book tells of Times correspondent Peter Fleming's 3,500-mile journey in 1935 from Peking, as the Chinese city was then known in the West, to Kashmir, accompanied by a female Swiss travel writer-photographer.

Fleming's account is very much a piece of travel writing, but the region they passed through was experiencing turbulent times, not least thanks to what was then a confident Soviet Union and its agents, so there is plenty to interest anyone with an interest in (recent) history.

I enjoyed the book so much that writing this mini-review has prompted me to order two more Fleming travel books via Amazon: Brazilian Adventure, about his part in searching for a missing British adventurer, and One's Company, Fleming's account of traveling to China for The Times.

They have cost me rather more than £2.25, but I have high hopes of another two enjoyable reads.

Brilliant Book

EVERY so often one comes across a gem of a book that is difficult to put down and is worth every penny of its relatively high price.

Lester Grabbe's Ancient Israel: What Do We Know And How Do We Know It? is very much in that category, at least as far as I am concerned.

Rather than being a history of Bronze Age Hebrews, it is a book setting out the various arguments that need to be addressed by anyone writing such a history.

Grabbe wanted to call the book Prolegomena To A History Of Israel, and that gives some idea of his learning, which at times he does not wear lightly, and of his intentions.

Prolegomena is the plural of prolegomenon, which is a fancy way of saying introduction or preliminary discussion.

Presumably his publishers, Bloomsbury, put their collective foot down and went for the more catchy title that the book bears.

Ancient Israel - the revised second edition, which I got by post for £27.21 from Books Etc

Grabbe, who was born in America but lectures at Hull University on the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism, comes across as passionate but detached - in other words, someone deeply immersed in his favourite subject, but without an axe to grind.

A long-running debate on the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament, divides many historians into minimalists and maximalists.

[There are extreme fringes on both sides, ie those who reckon the Bible is more-or-less a fairy tale, and those who believe it to be the direct word of God.]

Grabbe's take on this debate is to insist on the primacy of primary sources, the main one for him being archaeology.

He regards the Hebrew Bible as a secondary source and, though I doubt he would like the label, is very much a minimalist when it comes to what the Bible has to say about kings David and Solomon, and to what it has to say about what occurred before them.

But from the time of Omri, who almost 3,000 years ago ruled the northern kingdom of Israel, which the Assyrians referred to as the House of Omri, Grabbe leans much more to the maximalist side.

This is not really the place to give my take on the debate, but I found Grabbe's discussion of the points fascinating, even when I was reluctant to accept his conclusions.

Grabbe's book is one I look forward to continually dipping back into, and can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in ancient history, and especially anyone with an interest in biblical times.

But it certainly helps to have read the Old Testament, and so have some idea of the characters at the centre of the debate.

Beauty And The East

IF you like history and travel, then you could do a lot worse than get hold of a copy of a book I picked up for 99p from a branch of Oxfam (cannot recall which branch, but it might have been in Tunbridge Wells).
Colin Thubron spent four months walking through Lebanon in 1967 around the time of the Six-Day War.
The book's title, The Hills Of Adonis, refers to a Greek god of beauty who supposedly inhabited Lebanon's hills until he was killed by a wild boar.

The Hill's of Adonis - 2008 reprint by Vintage

Ironically, much of what Thubron writes about Adonis, especially of people believing the god annually died and was reborn, is dismissed by modern scholars.
But there is plenty of real Near East history here, starting from before the arrival of the Phoenicians, continuing through later conquerors including Byzantines, Arabs and Crusaders, and concluding with Lebanon's (very) limited involvement in the Six-Day War.
Naturally there is also much travelogue material, with Thubron finding the locals, whether Christian, Druze or Muslim. to be almost universally friendly before the Israeli-Arab conflict, but turning to hostility - at least from Muslims - during and after the war.
I had a similar experience of a seeming change in attitudes when I visited Jordan just before 9/11 and Tunisia just after it (although admittedly they are too somewhat different countries).
Thubron is a multi-prize-winning author, and apart from some purple patches of philosophy, I found The Hills of Adonis a rattling good read.

Recommended Read

FINALLY got around to reading Jonathan Clements' A Brief History Of Khubilai Khan - Lord Of Xanadu, Emperor Of China, which I bought in March in Hampstead for £3.99, marked down from £8.99.
My current trip to Bavaria gave me the necessary spare time, helped today by it literally raining non-stop, and the book has proved a riveting read.

Khubilai … part of publisher Robinson's A Brief History series

I cannot claim to have more than a passing general knowledge of the Mongols, but Clements' treatment of his subject comes across as balanced and dispassionate, not being afraid to point out where sources are contradictory and/or problematic.
There is little in the book for wargamers per se - no battle maps, for example - but I found the whole description of Mongol warfare and life to be engrossing.
I will certainly look out for more books by Clements, and for more on the Mongols.

Review: The Franco-Prussian War 1870-71

I BOUGHT this under-100-page summary of the Franco-Prussian War after seeing an online reviewer praise its maps.
The book was first published in 2003 as part of Osprey's Essential Histories series. My copy cost £6.21 plus £2.80 postage from BOOKS etc via Amazon.

Essential Histories … the cover shows Ernest Meissonier's The Siege of Paris

Osprey is best known for its highly specialist books for wargamers and model-soldier enthusiasts, but neither hobby gets a mention here as the book is clearly aimed at a more general audience.
Author Stephen Badsey is credited as a senior lecturer in war studies at Sandhurst, which makes him something of an ideal choice if you are looking for a summary of a conflict that concentrates on its military aspects.
I am no expert on the Franco-Prussian War, but his account reads like the sort of non-controversial account you would expect from Essential Histories.
It is lavishly illustrated with (mainly black-and-white) reproductions of contemporary illustrations, and modern maps of the more important battles and campaigns.

Two maps of the battle of Gravelotte-St Privat

The maps are mostly exactly what I was hoping for - stripped of excessive topographical detail while not so simplified as to be of no practical use. My main complaint with them is that more battles should have been covered, especially if this meant sacrificing some of the less-appropriate contemporary illustrations, eg the colour portrait of Napoleon III's wife that takes up the whole of page 23.
Badsey's text makes some important points that are easily overlooked, including:
1. The French army was highly regarded in the run-up to the outbreak of hostilities, having acquitted itself well in the Crimean War (1853-56) and having beaten the Austrians in the Second Italian War of Independence (1859).
2. The result of the Franco-Prussian War was not "the unification of Germany," but rather the creation of a smaller Germany that excluded one of the main German states, Austria.
The book is an entertaining easy read, and a bargain even if you have to pay the full recommended price of £10.99.

Review: Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815-1878

I AM a big fan of Neil Thomas's books, frequently re-reading or consulting Wargaming: An Introduction, Ancient & Medieval Wargaming and Napoleonic Wargaming.
The second of these I find especially entertaining and imaginative, particularly enjoying his accounts of four battles fought using the book's rules.
I held off buying Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815-1878, henceforward referred to as WNCE, because it was a specialist period that did not greatly interest me when the book came out, published by Pen & Sword, in 2012.

My hardback copy of WCNE, £15.02 from Book Depository via Amazon

Part of the reason I did not buy is that I found it hard to believe rules covering under 70 years would take up some 200 pages. I was right  - the rules occupy eight pages, including generous amounts of white space.
Army lists cover almost another 30 pages, but the really valuable part of the book is when Thomas converts historic battles into wargame scenarios.
By comparing scenario maps and unit numbers with maps and line-ups of the real battles, one can see how he goes about what is a particularly tricky business with the sprawling nature of some 19th-century engagements.
Unfortunately, and in contrast to the three previous books of Thomas I mentioned earlier, none of the scenarios is played through so there is no way to see the rules in action. This is a major and, for me, a very disappointing omission.
The book is also disfigured, as is usual with Thomas's books, by photos that have nothing to do with the book's rules. Indeed most of them are not even of wargames, but are posed dioramas.
There are some photos which Thomas identifies as being of armies "configured for my rules." Unfortunately, the armies are of Baccus 6mm figures which have, to my eyes, a ridiculous appearance by being placed on bases almost as thick as the figures are tall.
Much of the rest of the book is taken up with Thomas's succinct and very readable account of 19th-century military history and with his philosophy for designing wargame rules.
The latter brings on a strong sense of déjà vu since the same or very similar passages are in his previous books, and include several straw-man arguments. A lot of this is unavoidable, however, as Thomas has to cater to readers who do not have his previous books.
Less understandable is why an appendix on "Figure Sizes, Scales and Prices" has seemingly been cut-and-pasted from Napoleonic Wargaming, whose appendix was in turn cut-and-pasted from Ancient & Medieval Wargaming, without any apparent attempt at updating
So, all in all, a lot of criticism. Does this mean I am disappointed with my purchase? Not at all - I have gone through the book cover-to-cover twice and have re-read favourite sections many more times that that.
WNCE is proving excellent at stimulating my thoughts on how to refight the Franco-Prussian War as part of my Project Kaiser to mark its 150th anniversary.
Thomas remains a great writer of wargaming books - yes, WNCE is flawed, but it is, for me, a flawed masterpiece.

Review: The Portable Napoleonic Wargame

THE Portable Napoleonic Wargame is the third in a series of Portable Wargame books by veteran wargamer Bob Cordery.
I have the previous two books, The Portable Wargame and Developing The Portable Wargame, and have gone through the latest offering twice.
I bought it direct from the publisher, Lulu, in paperback format for £10.98, which includes £2.99 shipping.

Attractive cover

The book has some 170 pages and contains FOUR sets of rules, although one set is more of historic interest, being a modification of Joseph Morschauser III's rules from his pioneering 1962 book How To Play War Games In Miniature.
Morschauser fought his battles on a gridded table-top using figures and scenery that emphasised the toy aspect of the hobby.
Cordery follows very much in this tradition, although he has greatly developed the concept, adding layers of realism without overly complicating what are genuinely quickplay rules.
The great advantage of using a grid is it massively speeds movement and firing calculations. The price for this is a reduction in flexibility, and the obtrusiveness of the grid markings.
Cordery gets around the latter problem to a large extent by using hexagonal terrain produced by Nottinghamshire-based Kallistra. The terrain looks fabulous and, while the hexagonal lines are clear, they are not so "in your face" as you might expect.
Hex terrain works really well for 20th-century and later wargames, but I am a lot less keen on it for games set in earlier times when straight lines were usually such an important feature of how armies formed. A square grid, as used by Morschauser, works better, in my view.
Cordery goes into some depth on the pros and cons of hexes and squares in his original The Portable Wargame book. He does not repeat that discussion but you can get a clear picture of the issues by studying the three battles reported in great detail in The Portable Napoleonic Wargame.
Why three battles? Well, in addition to the modified Morschauser rules, Cordery includes three sets of his rules to cover Brigade, Division and Big Battle engagements. The differences between the three sets are not mere tinkering but reflect the very real differences in the scales depicted.
Each set comes with its own battle report - Division on a squares battlefield, the other two on hexes. The battles include numerous black-and-white photos and a complete turn-by-turn account of what happened.
These reports get repetitive at times, especially as the language used is somewhat long-winded, eg there are far too many sentences like: "The 2nd US Light Dragoons rolled a D6 to resolve what happened and a D6 die roll score of 4 meant that the unit lost a further 1SP [strength point]."
This could easily be reduced to: "The 2nd US Light Dragoons rolled a 4 to resolve what happened, losing a further SP."
Cordery is also addicted to footnotes. The book has 178 of these, all of which could have been incorporated into the text without any interruption to the flow of the narrative.
But to an extent these criticisms could be seen as nit-picking as there is so much to commend.
Even if you are not particularly interested in the Napoleonic period you might find the book worthwhile just for its appendix on two command-and-control systems using playing cards. These are in a way stripped-down versions of Bob Jones' famous - infamous to some people - Piquet family of rules.
Cordery's original playing-card system was detailed in The Portable Wargame. I used it in my refights of the Battle of Chotusitz http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-battle-of-chotusitz.html and the Battle of Sahay http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-battle-of-sahay.html with mixed results.

Looking from behind the French lines at the Battle of Sahay

He now calls this The Random Method and has added a similar, but much less random, Turn-By-Turn Method, which he uses in the book for his Division battle. It seems to work well for engagements using a small number of units, but then so does the system of orders he adds to his Big Battle rules.
None of the three sets of rules is meant to be sacrosanct, and I can well imagine a user wanting to add flavouring, one way being by adding so-called national characteristics (for example, the rules make no difference between the musketry of a two-deep British line and a three-deep French one).
Will there be more Portable Wargame books? I certainly hope so, and the obvious next step would be The Portable Ancient Wargame.
If so, I hope Cordery takes a leaf out of Neil Thomas's marvellous Ancient & Medieval Wargaming book by showing how Portable Wargame rules can be used to refight historical battles.
But that is for the future - for now I heartily recommend The Portable Napoleonic Wargame and feel sure it will make for pleasant browsing for many years to come.