Christopher Duffy

von Peter himself has several items to raise to the attention of The dear readers. With the aim of actually getting said items out the door this side of Christmas the executive decision has been made to publish them individually. So let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

Christopher Duffy – one of von Peter himself most favoured authors – has passed. Many of his books are prized possessions in the library of Neu Schloss von Peter and all are highly recommended reading for the wargamer &/or historian. Christopher had a way of writing which von Peter himself found to be so eminently readable as well as educational. Many happy hours have been spent with his writings and it is anticipated that many more will be spent the same way in the future. Fare thee well Christopher Duffy. You will be missed.

Helion & Company have posted an “In Memoriam: Christopher Duffy (1936-2022)” which is shamelessly repeated below (because von Peter himself is sick of linking to articles which eventually disappear!). If The dear reader does travel to the original article above then there is a short audio clip to be heard.

In Memoriam: Christopher Duffy (1936-2022)

Some thoughts from Dr Alexander S. Burns

The community of military historians has lost one of its best. On the morning of 16 November 2022, Christopher Duffy passed away after a short stay in Lewisham Hospital. Despite being active as a military historian for over 60 years, Christopher Duffy’s work still holds a special place of attention. His books have become the natural starting place for Anglophone scholars studying the military history of German Central Europe in the eighteenth century, as well as all scholars interested in the military history of the Jacobite 1745 Rebellion.

What is truly incredible about Christopher’s professional life, however, is not the way that he has connected with fellow scholars, but with the public. Christopher taught generations of British officers during this time at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst from 1961 to 1996. In this period, teaching young officers alongside John Keegan, David Chandler, and Richard Holmes, Christopher thoroughly enjoyed work that he would have happily done for free. He retired as the Senior Lecturer in War Studies and spent the next several years as a research professor at De Montfort University.

Christopher Duffy was many things to many people. As the editor of his festschrift I’ve been asked to reflect on his life in a few places. Here, for Helion & Co, I want to reflect on him in the way that many of us thought of him: a historian for the wargamers. Over the last 60 years, professional academic historians have become increasingly disconnected from public life. Increasingly, historians write monographs, printed in very small numbers, designed to be included in a select few university libraries, and read only by other members of the historical professional. While these books give an ever more detailed and diverse understanding of the human past, the average member of the public may not be interested in a monograph about ‘violence and the image of the human body’ or ‘early modern militaries and the emotive landscape’.

What made Christopher such a popular writer with wargamers, reenactors, and enthusiasts, and a figure of disdain in the elite university system is that he refused to capitulate to trends in academic writing. Christopher’s written work was always penned in a manner that could connect to a general audience. He endeavored to understand the past as it occurred, focusing on military structures that could be analysed, and military narratives that could be shared. Christopher was delighted his books found such a wide readership, which he often attributed to the dual analytical and narrative structure that his books so often employed.

Instead of following academic trends, Christopher immediately seized upon the utility and importance of wargaming as a way of exploring and experiencing the past. As a 12-year-old in the United States, years before I actual read Christopher’s work, I came to be aware of him as a result of repeated references to his scholarship in the book Wargame Tactics written by Charles Grant (Sr.).

As early as 1974, Christopher had developed a keen appreciation for wargamers. He was the editor of the ‘Historic Armies and Navies’ Series, whose dust jackets proudly proclaimed:

We have taken into account several important developments in the reading public: the military historian is at least coming to appreciate that he must place his subject in its political and social framework, while the general historian and devotee of “war studies” are less content than before to pile generalization upon generaliztion when they are talking about military affairs; most important at all we have had to recognize that the history of warfare has remained one of the fields where the serious professional researcher has kept contact with the “general public”[.]… Lastly we have borne in mind that the growing band of war gamers represents one of the most discerning and knowledgeable elements of our readership. We refer these individuals in particular to our maps and diagrams, and the lists of units and uniforms.

Even in the early 1970s, then, Christopher realized the importance of wargamers as a body of the reading public. In Fire and Stone, which appeared thin 1975, Christopher actually offered a brief wargame ruleset designed to encapuslate early modern siege warfare.

In addition to his voluminous writings, Christopher also kindly donated his time in the service of the interested public, taking on speaking engagements in the United Kingdom and the United States for private associations dedicated to the study of military history. His long connection with the Seven Years War Association fostered the study of the European Seven Years War in the United States, and Christopher developed long friendships with many members, such as the late wargame designers Jim Mitchell and Dean West. Many of these interested individuals in the United States and the United Kingdom joined Christopher, as he led tours of eighteenth-century European battlefields. He has never been afraid to devote time to the public, smashing the perception that rigorous researchers are disconnected from ordinary life.

In addition to writing and teaching, Christopher worked extensively in the service of a number of professional and public organizations related to his interests. He has served as a founding member and the Secretary-General of the British Commission for Military History (which he immediately pushed me to join upon our meeting) and served as the vice-president of the Military History Society of Ireland. As befits a scholar with an abiding interest in Jacobite military history, he served as the Chairman of the 1745 Association. Far from providing administration for these societies, Christopher has been at the forefront of the fight in Britain to preserve battlefields. Over the past 20 years, he has worked tirelessly with the National Trust for Scotland in order to preserve the Culloden Battlefield for posterity.

The vision of Christopher that will linger long in my mind is him stalking the wargame hall at the South Bend meetings of the Seven Years War Association. There, he examined the tables set up by Ken Bunger, Tod Kershner, Jim Purky, Dean West, and Dale Wood, all wargame designers influenced by his writings. They brought the world that so captured his imagination to life in ways that inspired him.

Christopher’s unique talents make him difficult to replace. As I have already alluded to, many academics are not writing with the general public specifically in mind. This makes the work of publishing companies like Helion even more important. Christopher was particularly proud to publish with Helion, and of the wide and varied work appearing there on eighteenth-century topics. In 2017, he commented to me, ‘Helion [is] a fast-moving newcomer in the publishing world and [is] snapping up some of the best of the new military historical writing’. Although Christopher is gone, we can be confident that the tradition he pioneered: rigorous academic writing written for a popular audience, will remain secure as we move into the twenty-first century.

Enough.

Until we meet again …

Salute
von Peter himself