Donald Featherstone

Donald F. Featherstone (20 March 1918 – 3 September 2013

 

It was with deep regret that I read earlier this week of the passing of Donald Featherstone. This man has had a huge impact on my life by introducing me to the hobby of wargaming way back in the early 1970's when I discovered his book War games in my local library. This now meant that instead of throwing rocks at my plastic Brittains and Airfix figures I could now roll dice and work out on charts what casualties my troops had suffered. Seeing the photographs of his games with lovely metal figures and great looking terrain inspired me to greater things which eventually led to a sand table in my Grandmother's spare room. Through his introduction to this hobby I have made many great friends all over the country but one of my highlights has to be meeting Donald at Salute about 3 or 4 years ago when Aly Morrison and myself put on a demo game of the 1st Schleswig Holstein War using Aly's  Shiny Toy Soldier range. He came over to our game and we had a good chat and he complimented us on our game, high praise indeed.

 

I still have this book as well as many more of Donald's books in my collection and still enjoy looking through them for inspiration. When I started gaming back in the 70's I thought I was at the beginning of the hobby but it was many years later that I discovered that Donald had organised the first British Wargames Convention back in 1961. Although he will no longer be around shows his influence on the hobby will be around for many years to come.

Donald at the bottom left in 1961