Richard Tennant – Man of Tin blog

60 inspiring illustrations but only one of them in colour …

Last year I wrote about the signed copy of Donald Featherstone’s Complete Wargaming that I had picked up secondhand, signed or dedicated to Richard Tennant.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/22/richard-tennant-and-donald-featherstones-incomplete-wargaming/

Reading through Solo Wargaming, my second favourite Featherstone title, (War Games 1962 first, Airborne Wargaming third, before you ask), I spotted another of Richard Tennant’s beautiful wargames terrain pieces.

Richard (Dick) Tennant sadly passed away in March 2021, aged 77.

There is an obituary piece for him here:

https://miniatureminions.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-tribute-to-passing-of-friend-dick.html

Many of these terrain pieces were made for Richard, something I discovered on Richard’s summary of the Miniature Minions website of David Crenshaw.

David now owns many of these Tennant Napoleonic collection figures. You can glimpse the building again in one of Tennant’s own photographs:

Richard Tennant wrote his own mini biography featured on David Crenshaw’s blog:

https://miniatureminions.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-richard-tennant-collection.html

It looks like one of these Spanish farms by Holmes of Deltorama or Peter Gilder has been photographed for Donald Featherstone’s lovely book, one of only two colour pictures including the cover picture of Airfix Arabs.

Richard Tennant was an early opponent of Donald Featherstone in Southampton in the 1960s and a lifelong friend of his. They both shared an interest in the Napoleonic and Peninsular Wars.

As well as Richard Tennant’s collections being together in the USA in good hands, it is good to know that many of Featherstone’s figures are together in the collection of Daniel Borris in the USA.

Solo Wargaming has been republished in affordable softback by John Curry in the History of Wargaming Project – http://www.wargaming.co/recreation/details/dfsolo.htm

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I also spotted Dick Tennant’s name again in Donald Featherstone’s Wargamers Newsletter of October 1969 (I have fairly randomly the Jan-Dec 1969 issues)

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, July 2021

Like many others growing up playing with toy soldiers in the 1960s or 70s, Donald Featherstone’s wargaming books borrowed from the public branch library were a great source of ideas and inspiration to me as a youngster.

Sadly I never got to meet Donald Featherstone before he died in 2013 but I do have a couple of books signed by him amongst my collection. Touched briefly by genius!

I am pleased to have a signed Featherstone volume of Complete Wargaming, this one dedicated to Dick Tennant, obviously released as the result of downsizing a lifetime collection.

The inscription to Dick Tennant celebrating 30 years friendship (published 1988)

This is one of two signed Featherstone books I have acquired over the last few years.

Featherstone’s Complete Wargaming came from a second hand seller for only £15 even though it was pencilled in next to the price ‘signed’.

I had no idea who Dick Tennant was.

Aha! Thanks to David Crenshaw at the Miniature Minions website in the USA, who has acquired some of the Tennant Napoleonics collection of figures, I now know who Richard Tennant is.

R.J. Tennant is one of the surviving original Donald Featherstone wargames conference circle from Southampton from the early 1960s.

https://miniatureminions.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-richard-tennant-collection.html

On the back of a David and Charles catalogue flyer for the book, someone has noted some proofreading errors and some photo reversal mistakes. Written by Richard Tennant?

Alongside the Featherstone signature are some pencilled notes that I take to be Richard Tennant’s corrections. The pencil handwriting appears different from Featherstone’s signature and dedication. It exactly matches the handwriting in Miniature Minions’ blogpost about Tennant’s figures and research notebook.

Reading the MiniatureMinions blog post, there is much mention of the Peninsular War and even a mention of this windmill made by George Erik.

From: https://miniatureminions.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-richard-tennant-collection.html

See the fly leaf pencil note about the “model illustrated on page 197 custom made by G.Erik photographed with own figures” – written by Richard Tennant

The Peninsular War appears to be a particular interest of both Tennant and Featherstone; I recall reading some of Donald Featherstone’s later articles about the battlefields in modelling or gaming magazines in the 1980s.

One of Richard’s figures used in the book? See the pencil flyleaf note re. “Photographs p. 139”

Featherstone’s Complete Wargaming has been reissued in a revised and corrected paperback version by John Curry of the History of Wargaming Project, working to correct some of these original printing and photographic errors.

http://www.wargaming.co/recreation/details/dfcomplete.htm

My other Featherstone signature is in At Them With The Bayonet!, Featherstone’s book on the Anglo Sikh Wars. Unusually it is signed by Featherstone in lurid pink felt-tip (maybe you sign with whatever you have to hand?) inscribed to A.S. Donald, whoever that is. Again, this signed copy was not expensive, not being one of his better known Wargames books and one on an obscure Victorian conflict.

That distinctive Featherstone signature – in pink felt tip.

As well as Richard Tennant, I have come across another of Featherstone’s early circle, one who is still blogging:

Rod’s Wargaming is by another still blogging member of this early wargames conference / community, Rod MacArthur has on his website some great pictures of 1960s Airfix conversions that sometimes involved Featherstone’s mould making help:

https://rodwargaming.wordpress.com

A little bit of Featherstone wargaming history, all still going strong and in use – I’m sure both Don and Dick would be pleased!

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 22 December 2020

Tag: Richard Tennant

Another inspiring photograph from Richard Tennant in Featherstone’s Solo Wargaming

Richard Tennant and Donald Featherstone’s Incomplete Wargaming