Only new in a certain sense. I am in my forties . Since early teens I have had a keen interest in affairs military and historical - with emphasis on WW2. I also have a passion for cars, and waste (?) a lot of time and money keeping old Citroens going - something I picked up (like a disease) when I lived in France. I an now living back in the UK and getting on with life - I design and write illustrated books for the 6-16 age range, so my work is quite varied.

So why wait until now to join a Forum? Well, I've never considered it before - being firmly entrenched in a specialist car forum or two, I must've been a little blinkered!

What are my main areas of interest in WW2?
• The Machinery/technology, particularly AFVs and aircraft, • The air campaign over Germany, • The Eastern Front, • The 'home fronts' and lives of ordinary people in occupied territories, • The later Pacific campaigns, • 'Secret' strategies, missions and weapons...

Obviously it's not an exclusive list, there are other things outside those broad areas that interest me, such as U-Boat operations, but essentially if I have to categorise my key interests, that's them.

I will spend some time going through previous threads and getting a 'feel' for the Forum, but it does look like a place I will get something from - and I hope I too can bring something to the party.

I have, on many occasions, participated in the design of 'Military subject' books (RAF, US Civil War, Submarines, Special Forces etc...) , but these days I don't get involved. What disappointed me then and even more so now is the awful quality of so much of the editorial in 'big' miliary books. Some books - I have a hilarious one on Wittman translated from the German (?) - are truly bad. The standard of captioning is often laughable and the factual content is flawed... Case in point would be the atrociously designed, written, edited (and so on) Janes series (Harper Collins) that includes such tiles as 'Battles with the Luftwaffe'.

But before I ask 'what are your top five WORST and top five BEST WW2 illustrated books?' -I'll spend some time on the threads - and who know's someone else might have got there before me