I have just started painting some Perry plastic Napoleonic British Infantry and I was in Foyles today when I spotted this book. It's just come out (about ten days ago) after some delay, I gather. It's subtitled The First Complete Illustrated guide to uniforms, facings and lace and that is exactly what it is. Every numbered British cavalry and infantry regiment gets a full page colour plate detailing uniforms and lace covering both the earlier periods and the Waterloo period. So on a typical page there will be about ten pictures of jackets (officers, men and musicians) with details of lace, officers' breast plates and buttons. The Cavalry section gives all the shabraques and harness details as well. This is just a tremendous resource for the figure painter and I know that I will be using it for years to come.
There are no artillery uniforms presumably because these have been covered by the same author's companion book British Napolenic Field Artillery, which I have just ordered.
I am at the point where I have to decide which regiment to model first (one from Picton's Division no doubt) and this will help a lot. The only thing which would have made it really complete would have been illustrations of the regiments' drums and flags but then it is really a uniform book so that can't really be expected.
2 comments:
Someone on TMP said that the colour of the scarlet coats has come out all funny - is that your experience?
Best wishes
Giles
The officers' coats are shown as a bright red, the mens' coats are shown as a brick red so you get two different colours on one page. It's not scarlet but I assumed the differences had been exaggerated for effect. Not a problem for me as I am not using the book to get exact tints correct!
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