Peter Cushing's Napoleonic wargaming by the Perry Brothers

 Peter Cushing’s Napoleonic wargaming ephemera….a treasure trove of wargaming history.

Last month Alan was lucky enough to win a bid at auction of the last items of Peter Cushing’s estate. Apart from his profession as a very fine actor starring in over one hundred films (22 of which were Hammer Horror) plus television and stage, many people (mostly wargamers) know he was a keen model soldier collector. He was also an excellent artist, terrain maker, figure and flag painter and, as it turns out, at the forefront of wargaming. By all accounts he was a true gentleman both on set and off.

Most of the auction was concerned with his film career and fair amount of his watercolours and sketches. There were two lots on his collecting/wargaming interests. The lot Alan won was a box file filled with Peter’s Napoleonic wargaming ephemera; handwritten notes on making terrain, painting flags plus many campaign letters, orders of battle and maps. The letters are between Don Houghton (his good friend) and himself mostly about wargaming. Don Houghton was a screenwriter and producer involved with Peter on quite a few films in the 1970’s. Being a screenwriter many of his letters to Peter about the campaign are extremely entertaining, written in a Napoleonic martial style.

What’s doubly fascinating is that most of Peter’s notes are on the back of film scripts! This also helps in dating the notes.

The main impression we have of Peter Cushing, as a wargamer, is from the 1956 Pathe News reel,

painting and playing with 54mm figures using H G ‘Wells Little Wars’. However, these notes show that by the 1970’s he was fully in tune with the ‘modern’ wargaming ideas; including building modular terrain on 2 ft x 2ft boards (it seems mostly for Don) and involved in Napoleonic campaigns, very much like the ones many people, including ourselves, run and take part in today. His modular terrain was designed to have the roads running off centrally, 12'' in from the corners, and 3’’ wide, so as many computations as possible could be created. He also made scaled down versions for Don to take away when he was working abroad, to give him time to plan his battles. Don used to drive to Peter’s to collect the terrain and boards, he actually bought a car for this particular reason with a large boot to fit them in! The campaigns in those days were, of course, by mail (or pigeon as Don puts it) so we have quite a good but not entire snapshot of the way their campaign/games were played as Don kept Peter up to date on what he was doing as the British commander in the campaigns. It also seems Peter loved painting flags, mostly for Don and possibly for himself too at well into the 1980’s. There were about 60 up for sale recently, but unfortunately we both missed them.

Peter could turn his skill’s to converting figures too. When Don couldn’t get any Minifigs figures standing at ease (because they didn’t make any) he asked Peter to convert a British and a French infantryman for him.

There is a lot of fascinating information in the notes, letters and photographs on different parts of the hobby, enough for a few posts here at least.

The first post will be a recreation of one of the games which was part of a ‘what if’ Waterloo campaign that Don and Peter were involved in.

Peter Cushing (1956) - YouTube