D is for Discovering Shire Albums in the Shire Library

Continuing with the meander through my collecting library, both for the general interest and/or hell of it, and as an illustrated bibliography which may or may not be of interest to readers, new or loyal, as to suggesting titles they might want to track down.

 

Shire Publications began with UK-specific travel and local geographic guides, known as the Discovering series, which I don't think ever got a full numbering system, even as they expanded into wider hobby interests, beginning with cultural/rural/folk stuff. That led to the larger format Shire Albums, which were renamed Shire Library when Osprey bought the intellectual property a couple of decades ago, now Osprey itself has been bought by Bloomsbury, and the future is unknown. Shire Albums were numbered more formally, and there are a couple of useful lists of early volumes, here;

Discovering series -  https://www.publishinghistory.com/discovering-series-shire.html 

Shire Albums -  https://www.publishinghistory.com/shire-albums.html

The main storage collection, as it stood about five years ago, these are the smaller Discovering series, with a few similarly formatted softback/pamphlet type publications. I don't know the full argot or jargon of book sizes, and as anyone who has a library will know, they creep in either height or depth by increments of millimetres, with hardbacks complicating things by having internal pages smaller than the dimensions of the whole 'box'. But both formats from Shire Publications were 'standard' sizes used by many other publishers/printers.

 

Here we see a MAP (Model [and] Allied Publications) guide to early plastic kits, which I mentioned while looking at the Burns guides in previous posts on the far right, and on the left a Hamlyn 'All Colour' guide to war-gaming on the left.

 

The Discovering's cover war-gaming and modelling, uniforms and militaria, artillery, horse-drawn transport and horse furniture, and while they are all small, are still very useful for research, especially when you are looking for something specific, or on the tip of an increasingly forgetful tongue (old age bites!), each is like a better illustrated Wikipedia page, you only need to reach for, no Googling lots of useless crap!

 

The larger format Shire Albums include an early tome by James Opie, and are in an even commoner format (A5), so we see an Argus Publishing plans book, and several self-published efforts, including the late John Clarke's diorama's, Britains [horse-]racing colours, and both the Spot On guide and overview of a private collection of cartoon die-casts are self-published, I think.

 

The Airfix history was one of the last new titles added to the Shire stable, numbered at 598, while the W&H list should be with the catalogues, where I have several more, it was a yearly thing for some years, I believe.

 

Added the next day - I thought there were a bunch missing! The core of the toy-related volumes are in the larger format Shire Album size, and here's their shot! 

 

Cropped out of a larger image we'll see in a future post, I grabbed this in the last few years, firstly because 'once you're collecting these things . . . ', and secondly I thought it might help ID some farm/Santon type stuff, and lastly, there is a bit of a costume sub-library in any case!

 

These were all issued as 'free gifts' in Military Modelling magazine, and used to be stapled into the centre-fold, but (with the exception of the one on top, which was a different size for some reason), they were all A5.

 

Private publications, there is very little in these which is still relevant or useful now, but they remain in the library, as all books should, in part as part of the history of the library, and against the concept of 'you never know'; always worth a flick if you're looking for something specific, like a code-number. I have no idea how many titles were issued in this private, or club (?) series?

 

Covers are different, contents are the same, -Album versus -Library.

 

Another MAP, they tended to be compendiums of material previously published in their stable of hobby magazines, and interesting to see an early publication from Pat Hammond, who would go on to become better known for his work on Hornby, Tri-Ang and Binns Road.

 

The MAP is an ex-library copy, both a useful source of old titles, and a guarantee of cheap-price, as true 'collectors' (Bibliophiles) don't rate them, so neither do the second-hand book trade!

 

 Four more minor publisher/self-published types, including more trams (all useful for manufacturers data), and three peripheral tomes, but it all builds the whole, and appendices often have useful stuff in them, lists of manufactures, or after-market (now 'garage') producers.

 

 More of the same.

 

One of the first of the new Library titles, and a useful little overview. Really belongs with the Atlantic Wall/Channel Island subsection of the military library, but should be with its brother volumes, a perennial problem when a figure or book sits firmly in two camps. Does it belong in Cake Decorations, or Ceremonials? Is it Fantasy or Medieval? Bought new, a few years ago, from Waterstones in Basingrad.

 

A visit to the secondhand bookshop in Alton, 2021.

 

Three titles I inherited, as I was sorting my late Mother's estate out, over the last few years, I have a subsection, or subsections on tiles and mosaic, so a useful work, while Shire Archaeology is a third series, running - to date - to 91 titles, listed here;

 

Shire Archaeology - https://www.librarything.com/nseries/15546/Shire-Archaeology

 

Three more interesting tomes, particularly the schools one, not something I have much on, in the library as a whole, an old ex-Public Library book on school architecture in the arts section, maybe? But an interesting read.

 

I don't know if anyone caught the history of Boarding Schools by Nicky Campbell, the Radio1 DJ, on Radio4 recently, but as someone shoved through that flawed and damaging system, I found it both poignant and nostalgic in equal measure.

 

Also inherited, these share one code in the partial numbering of Discovering's

Mum's own fields included furniture, silverware, and latterly oriental art and ceramics.

 

 Another visit to Alton!

 

The most recent but one visit, and seen before, we've also seen Horse Drawn Commercial Vehicles and a second edition of Antique Maps, from a visit this year. While 487, Garden Gnomes, has so far escaped me, but it's only a matter of time! Discovering Book Collecting is a good full stop to this post!

O is for Other Books

When I showed the new additions to the collectables' library, I mentioned a few other books I'd bought recently, half in the Alton second-hand bookshop, most of the others in Waterststones, and a couple in TKMaxx, of all places, not toy soldiery, not toy'y at all, but it gives you a better idea about who I am, or what I'm about!

 

Old Shire Albums, but specifically, the Natural History sub-set, which have more colour images than most Shire's, certainly the older ones, and looking at a small field in some detail, snails perticularly tend to get passed-by, unless they are perticularly colourfull in the shell department.

 

Same Alton shop, different day, and they had these two, even more academic works (same author on the Ants), and Hoverflies are among my favourites, there is a wide number of them, and they can differ quite a bit, even within local populations, so photographing them never gets boring . . . like is does when, for instance, you find something covered in domestic honey bees - after a few good shots, you just stop shooting them!

 

I also grabbed this, it's a truism for a lot of reference works, even military ones, the text of the old ones is better, the illustrations of the new ones is superior, and with everything in storage, I picked-up this spiral bound work, going cheap, just so I'd have something here, the best feature of it being the open/closed artwork.

 

This was the Waterstones, not that pricey, and I've since been back to get the matching volume on wild flowers, as I always get confused by all the white umbel-flowered types, some of which are deadly poisonous (hemlock), others totally safe (cow parsley).

 

This book has a good range of insects, covered in some depth, with most of the European visitors included, as assumed summer finds. Not much on the North American visitors, and I've encountered two in recent years, both beetles (longhorn and pine), blown over by storms.

 

This was a bit of fun, I think I remember it from junior-school, and nostalgia is a powerful tug on the wallet sometimes, also you can find poses, colour-ways or now debunked physical features in these early works, which you can match to specific, contemporary toys, as the sculptors or art departments used the same books!

 

I bought a batch of raffle tickets at the BMSS's annual show in Reading and won these two. Both related to post '44 France, in World War Two, you can't go wrong with Ospray, and while I tend to collect the uniform works, these will be an interesting read, and once read, can always go in another raffle!

 

The first was an impulse buy, in the Basingrad TKMaxx, only for me to find the other at Farnborough Gate's store, a week or so later. They are supposedly academic 'fan' works, looking at an aspect of the Tolkien world, comparing it to the world Tolkien lived and wrote in, and tying all the loose ends together . . . kind of things?

 

I've only briefly dipped into them, but I think they will prove interesting, and anything which simplifies or explains in a shorter-form, or in a language I can follow, all the tediousness of the post-Silmarillion books, and the 'Tolkien Universe' stuff issued by the son, is a good thing, but the fact it appears there are still five to find, has curbed my enthusiasm somewhat!

 

What triggered the impulse of the first purchase, was the feel of them, they have a sort of faux-leather, which is almost micro- or nano-flocking, so they feel soft somehow, but colder than leather, so a treated polymer foil of some kind? They also look a bit like the ancient world library I built, from Folio Society books, years ago.

 

But anyway I have them now, and with a small sub-library of Tolkien books, including a few bestiaries, and fantasy art-books, they will add to the oeuvre, and enhance the eventual auction-lot, before I leave the room permanently!

W is for Wagon Books

The more astute among you will have noticed a propensity for returning to the theme of Horse drawn transport on these pages! It is a sub-genre of my collecting, and one that is a great favorite of mine. These are - to a certain extent my bibles and I thought I'd better share them with you.

Either side are old Shire Albums on British civilian and military wagons, both nice little works, and usually pick-up'able for a few quid or less. In the middle is the Blanford Colour Series, which is doubly useful as it give the foreign names alongside the English. Again should be able to find this on Amazon for 'Pennies'...