It's a rainy bank holiday so I find myself tootling through amazon browsing for reading inspiration. It turns out that these are five most expensive books you can buy on the subject of the Napoleonic wars - should they be?
Counting down they are....
5 Napoleon's Last Grande Armee: Portraits from the 1813 Campaign - leather bound and illustrated, Alfred Umhey This one is new to me - but here is a copy listed at £459.97.
4 L'armée de Napoléon : Uniformes du Ier Empire, 1792-1815 - by the same author as above.... Alfred Umhey and Jacques Domange, Another new one on me but looks fab and a snip at £686.93 !
2 Napoleon's Army - hardback by Lucien Rousselot - priced somewhere between £160 and a truly gobsmacking £1065.8
1 Napoleonic Uniforms: Volumes 3 and 4 Vassals and Enemies by Elting and Knotel.
Love these books and lucky enough to have bought them when first published - Thinner volumes than the first two but browsing through them is inspirational. However certainly wouldn't want to shell out up to £1,898.34 for this pair! The lowest price is around £1200.00!
So what do they have in common?
- Pictures - lots of lovely pictures and who doesn;t love lots of uniform pics
- The subject is mainly the French army
- Mad bookshops with unrealistic expectations
Would I sell the ones of these I own at these prices - hell yes! Then spend the money on traveling round 2nd handbook shops to buy them back at a lower price. It would be a joy!
