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Shaggy Dog Publishing Presents
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Talking Miniatures draws together entertaining and occasionally surprising recollections from the eclectic cast of designers, sculptors, artists, rebels and non-conformists who gravitated towards the early Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures.

Written and compiled by former White Dwarf Editor – Robin Dews and former Citadel/GW Sales Director – John Stallard; Talking Miniatures simply tells the stories of ordinary people, doing extraordinary things, with incredible levels of skill, passion, commitment and belief.

And Talking Miniatures was recently awarded 'Best Gaming Accessory 2023' by those lovely chaps over at OnTheTabletop. Check out what they have to say about the book here: (Talking Miniatures is at 58:25)
OnTheTabletop Gaming Industry Awards 2023

About
How this book came about

This book started life in a humble way, with a casual conversation between co-authors, Robin Dews and John Stallard, over a cup of tea in John’s back garden in the late summer of 2016. We were chatting about the creative and commercial success that Games Workshop had become as it roared into its fourth decade. We also remarked, with no little sense of disbelief, how, like so many other people who’d joined the fledgling company in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we were now on the verge of drawing our pensions! Two old curmudgeons, ruminating on the passing of time. If memory holds true, I believe it was John who first suggested that “someone ought to write all this down before we all become too old and decrepit”. It seemed like a good idea at the time and given that between the two of us we had worked for over sixty years, first at Citadel (in John’s case) and then for Games Workshop (in both cases) and were personal friends with many of the early staff members such as Tony Ackland, Rick Priestley, Jervis Johnson, Alan and Michael Perry, Bob Naismith, Trish Carden and so on. We decided that there was probably no one better placed than the pair of us to get this done. So there and then, under early autumn leaves and fuelled by tea and digestives, the idea of Talking Miniatures was born.

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Who are the Talking Miniatures?

Talking Miniatures features conversations with seventeen of the people involved in the early Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures, all of whom went on to make their own mark in the hobby.

Buy the book
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You can buy Talking Miniatures direct from Shaggy Dog Publishing by clicking here here
 

All orders will be fulfilled and despatched by Warlord Games and so the button will take you through to their webstore. The package consists of both full-colour, soft-backed volumes presented together in a hard slipcase.


The price for the Standard Edition is:
£55GBP/€65EURO/$85USD

"A wonderful trip down memory lane..."

 Sir Ian Livingstone

The book is also available from Amazon both in the US and the UK 

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Press

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Who are Shaggy Dog publishing?

 

A. Shaggy Dog Publishing was set up by Robin Dews and John Stallard in 2022, to publish, sell and distribute Talking Miniatures. Robin and John have known each other for longer than either care to remember and they decided that if no one else was going to write down the exciting story of Citadel miniatures, Warhammer, and Games Workshop, then perhaps they should do it themselves. The company is based in Nottingham, England and has two staff members, the two co-owners, Robin and John.

 

Q. Why another book about Games Workshop, when Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson recently published their own origin story of the company?

 

A. Talking Miniatures is in no way a linear factual history of GW. Sir Ian Livingstone has indeed written a splendid book – Dice Men – about how he and his friend Steve Jackson, applied their passion and enthusiasm for board games, role playing games and miniatures, to establish and expand the fledgling Games Workshop. If you are looking for a well-researched, day-to-day account of GW’s early years, then we would heartily recommend Dice Men. It’s a great read and tells the nuts-and-bolts story of how they set the company on its path to greatness.

 

Our book, on the other hand, consists of a series of chatty conversations with seventeen of the people – artists, designers, miniature painters, and cat herders – who worked at Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures in the late 1980s and early 1990’s. The book contains their stories, recollections, and reflections on what it was like working for Citadel and Games Workshop in those early years, as they remember them. It’s a lot of fun, with many amusing tales, some of which downright contradict each other, but such is the power of memory. We simply decided that as none of us are getting any younger, unless somebody captured these stories and took the effort to write some of it down, it would all be lost to time. That is how Talking Miniatures came to be written.

 

Q. So, is this a licenced book authorised by Games Workshop?

 

A. No, it is an independent publication that has taken over four years to research, write and compile.

 

Q. So how did you select the seventeen interviewees? Surely, loads more people could have written or contributed material to the book?

 

A. Well that is true, but we had to start and end somewhere. We wanted to capture as wide a range of voices, along with their very personal memories, of what was a very remarkable era in the history of tabletop gaming. Even despite the decision to focus on just seventeen interviewees (plus of course Robin and John who memories and recollections appear in every chapter) the project just kept getting bigger and bigger over time.

 

In the end, even with some judicious editing, we had over five hundred pages of material and so decided to split the book into two volumes (so that we could physically bind them) and present these in a luxury slipcase, in order to make the whole publication a thing of beauty.

 

The two tomes are a complete treat to read and generally drool over. The conversations, facilitated by John and Robin, are intimate and far ranging, giving our subjects plenty of time and space to describe the day-to-day aspects of their contributions to Citadel and GW. At times, the conversations also become wonderfully chaotic – you try interviewing the Perry twins in the same room at the same time! However, throughout the book, people tell us stories that are honest, entertaining, and sometimes simply charming. We are really proud of it.

 

Q. Can I buy this book from my local friendly games’ retailer?

 

A.  On release, we have decided to do all the sales ourselves through the Talking Miniatures website with shipping and despatch handled by John’s company – Warlord Games. Amazon is the only other retailer that we thought it sensible to sell through at this stage, and so it will be available there too. If the book goes well, and we hope it does, we may open up distribution further.

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