(1/13) Self-indulgent thread alert . Inspired by some enjoyable tweets from @ProfPeterDoyle the other week (and sponsored by lockdown boredom), I thought I’d take a look through my shelves to pick out a couple of books that had an early impact on me.

(2/13) First up. A battered old Pitkin Guide, souvenir of my very first visit to #Normandy with my family in June 1994. I was six, and the sights and atmosphere of that holiday set me up for a lifetime fascination with military history.

(3/13) Heresy: our first work of (semi) fiction. But this old Victor annual of my dad’s deserves mention from around the same period. Lots of #SecondWorldWar, but what lit my imagination was the story of the Ox and Bucks and the rest of 6th Airborne Division at the dawn of D-Day.

(4/13) So many years on, that depiction was still vivid in my mind standing at Pegasus Bridge in the early hours of 6 June last year during #DDay75.

(5/13) Sticking with the #Normandy theme. Read and re-read as a schoolboy, and many times since. Stands the test of time in capturing the scale and drama of D-Day. (Bonus point for being authored by a CBS boy from Dublin.)

(6/13) Another fiction entry. Say what you like about #Sharpe, but growing up in the 1990s the ITV series led to @BernardCornwell’s novels which many moons later led to writing my MA thesis on Ireland and #Waterloo. I owe that rifleman a lot.

(7/13) I was even a paid-up member of the SAS (that’s the Sharpe Appreciation Society to you) during its heyday. My collection was complete down to the official series companion book.

(8/13) A reasonably accurate overview of the day to day life of a #Napoleonic British soldier. I had such happy memories of borrowing this from our local library as a child that I bought a secondhand copy on eBay a few years ago.

(9/13) Another public library stalwart. The cover image of battle debris amongst the trampled crops of #Waterloo was always so evocative. At around that stage, I got to visit the battlefield for the first time.

(10/13) A scarred veteran - now missing its entire first half. This classic biography by Lady Longford gets the credit for my first childhood glimpse of some of the real history behind #Sharpe: #India, the #Peninsula and #Waterloo. Plus, #Wellington’s feckless Irish youth.

(11/13) I can’t remember when I last opened this young person’s guide to the #FirstWorldWar. Yet its recreated images are indelibly familiar, like this scene of weary Tommies resting in a muddy communications trench.

(12/13) A #Napoleonic title again, by @WaterlooMaughan. Purchased in the late Waterstones on Dawson Street in the early Noughties. Timely for reference and inspiration, as it was around the stage that I began painting #Napoleonic wargaming miniatures.

(13/13) Lastly, I could never omit @OspreyBooks. Beloved of wargamers, modellers and military anoraks the world over. The maps and colour plates in these slim little volumes visualised military history for me as a youth like nothing else. They still do!