As the enthusiastic ‘scribblers’ behind 3 pictorial reference works on Australian Army (metal) insignia, we try to directly respond to all questions recieved from Readers of this blog site. Sometimes, that takes longer than might be expected (depending upon other time demands) and no offence is intended if an enquiry seems to be ‘overlooked’, because that generally means that it is taking some time to provide a careful and useful response.
Nonetheless, from time to time, we get questions which are probably best answered publically, so we have decided to add this page to CBBooks… in an effort to give as much of the same material to most Readers as efficiently as we can. So, here goes…
Q1 ‘Will you put out any books covering earlier periods of Australian Army insignia?’
ANSWER:
“… As for whether we will produce works covering earlier periods of Australian Army insignia, the short answer is ‘yes’. In fact, we have recently announced that with continuing research support from the AWM and from the Australian Army History Unit, we have started on the research required for the period 1901 through to 1952.
Preliminary research seems to indicate that coverage of that 51 year time-frame, will require about 600 pages to detail and depict. As such, we currently plan to break the planned work into no less than 2 volumes. For present administrative purposes only, those Volumes are currently set as covering 1901 to 1929 and from 1930 to 1952.
It might be added, that our two previous hard copy works, plus the 600 page ‘encyclopedic’ (pdf) Edition of Vol 1, took us over a decade to compile. So, although we have learned a great deal about tackling these publication tasks and although we have become more efficient as we have progressed, it is still very unlikely that an additional new volume (nominally covering 1930 to 1952), would take any less than 18 months to compile. It would also be quite realistic to double that to 3 years, (depending upon just how much time is spent on concurrent research of the proceeding era etc). On that basis, it is likely to be sometime after mid 2021, before any completed new work is released. In the interim, we do expect to publish blog posts on ‘odd’ or ‘conflicting’ matters that we uncover as we go. In particular, we will publish images of ‘odd’ or ‘problematic’ items for comment and feedback from Readers. We typically do that on our blog site (which feeds facebook etc) and via the British & Commonwealth Military Badge Forum (which I highly recommend to collectors and to historians alike). That specialist Forum can be found at: https://www.britishbadgeforum.com/forums/index.php
It is hoped that this ‘backgrounder’ is of some genuine help to everyone.
Yours in collecting, research and in scribbling about it all,
The Authors
https://charliebravobooks.com/
“Metal Uniform Embellishments of the Australian Army”
Post 1953 (the ‘QEII’ era)
Vol 1: Insignia for Corps and Schools Etc and
Vol 2: Insignia for Units and Regiments.
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To quote an old friend:
“If you are able to read this, thank a teacher.
If you are able to read this in English, thank a soldier.”
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