Do I really look like that? Well, it is a caricature, after all. I have been variously accused of being the spitting image of Keifer Sutherland, Clint Eastwood, Kenny Everett and Terry Pratchett. This tells me that individuals' perceptions of others are highly subjective, and are based on more than just the information that comes in through their optic nerves. A caricature, therefore, is conceivably more informative than any other image I might have placed here. Strangely, in the 23 years since I drew that cartoon, and wrote those words, little has changed. The beard is rather more white than red now, but that is about all.
Professionally my background is a Purchasing/Supply-Chain Manager, (a Corporate Member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply). I subsequently earnt my living as a military historian and am now a residential property landlord.
My real love is naval and military history, particularly the study of the Crimean War. If you would like to see a rather out-of-date list of the books and articles I have to my credit as a military historian, just click on Books & Articles.
I am a member and former committee member of the Crimean War Research Society, and an ordinary member of the Society for Army Historical Research, the Military Historical Society, the World Ship Society, the Society for Nautical Research, and the Orders and Medals Research Society.
Also included amongst my many talents are those of an internet discussion list manager, running a "virtual clubhouse" for those interested in the Crimean War. To join the Crimean War mailing list, click here, (a click will enable you to send a blank e-mail to the appropriate subscription address).
I am an inveterate collector, actively collecting in the fields of military medals and early military photographic portraits. If you would like to learn more about specific medals I am seeking (either those needed to reunite with others to the same recipient already in my collection, or those to family members that have so far escaped my grasp) please click here. For those interested in military portraits, a more-or-less up-to-date catalogue of my collection can be found here, and a "Rogues Gallery" of portraits whose subjects have proved resistant to identification can be found here. Can YOU help me put names to any of these faces?
Aside from reading a disturbing number of history books, I also enjoy the science fiction and/or fantasy of Robert Heinlein, Terry Pratchett, Lois McMaster Bujold, the mystery novels and stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, Dame Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Reginald Hill, Ed McBain and Simon Brett, and, of course, anything ever written by the great George MacDonald Fraser. I am (or was - it seems to have vanished) a member of the Royal Flashman Society of Upper Canada (for which organisation I wrote a treatise on the Medals of Sir Harry Flashman, which also seems to have disappeared from the web without trace), and the former Vice-Chairman and a founder member of the Flashman Society of the United Kingdom (also, alas, no longer active) for whom I wrote this spurious extract from the Flashman papers, covering the "missing" year of 1855-56.
I have been a member of British Mensa for over thirty-five years and am the immediate past Chairman of the East Midlands Region of the society.
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Last updated by Michael Hargreave Mawson on the 8th of August, 2021.
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