That is what

In response to my last post, in which I had a whinge about the latest edition of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, a wise man has been pointed out that you can't please all the people all of the time. Fair dos, and I shall mention the matter no more. Except to point out that a more cynical man than me might point to the happy chance by which a completely unsuitable set of rules which happen to be published by Osprey are shoehorned into a series of articles which rely for their lavish illustration on pictures whose copyright is owned by that very same Osprey. Moving on...

In order to make my gridded Great War tabletop more pleasing to the eye I have had recourse to our friends in the model railway hobby, but the materials which I have ordered via the interweb haven't yet arrived. What did come in yesterday's post was a cheap second hand DVD of Tony Richardson's film 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. My recent re-reading of the first Flashman novel, which features more than one appearance by Lord Cardigan, had brought it to mind along with the fact that it was a very long time since I had seen it. Having watched it again, I must confess that I don't think much of it. However, I won't dwell on the negatives, because the performances of Sir John Gielgud as Raglan, Harry Andrews as Lucan, and Trevor Howard as Cardigan are all very good indeed. My cynical alter ego might be tempted to note that George MacDonald Fraser's written description of Lord Cardigan, first published in 1969, is pretty much identical to Howard's performance as the man in a film released in 1968.