Review of "The Lee Enfield"

[Gibbs505]

I have been asked to write a review on Ian Skennerton's newly published volume on the Lee Enfield Rifle and, with some trepidation, here goes!

Firstly, this is an impressive book! On my scale it weighs in at 4.8 lb's; it measures a full 30.5cm by 22cm and is 3.5cm thick. For those of you stuck in the Imperial age that is 12" by 8.75" by1.5". It is bigger then the earlier book in every respect.

Continuing with the exterior, I really like the fact that that jacket cover is constructed of a heavier gauge of paper. It makes the book feel a lot more comfortable in my hands. I also like the built in red, white and blue chapter/page markers, a nice touch.

Turning to the contents, just looking at the list of chapters, you can see at a glance some of the many change's Mr. Skennerton has made! There are five additional chapters, including a new one I particularly like on ammunition. The first chapter, the preview, deals with basic model identification. This is new and many will find this very helpful in real life. Putting this all in a new chapter, ideally placed right at the front of the book, is a great idea.

Following on this the book takes us back to the beginnings of the Lee Enfield story with a look at how the British decided that they needed a modern rifle; who the designers were and their background stories. I find it significant that, where this took up ten pages in the previous book, this part now occupies two more pages. There is a lot more information about Lee in the book. This is of course, only the beginning!

As I have only started to read the book thoroughly and am only into the third chapter, I will not provide a chapter by chapter comparison, that would be a work much longer then I have and that you would be willing to wait for. A quick perusal of the book shows all the features advertised. That is, color photos, many new photos that I can see, even without checking the earlier book, and more information in every chapter. I look forward to sitting down with this book and enjoying a thorough read in the weeks and months to come.

Finally, I can only completely recommend this book as the seminal work on the Lee Enfield. It also will become the standard by which any other book on a particular firearm would be judged. Indeed, I would stand this book against any other reference work or indeed any other book dealing with any other subject matter at all.

Need I say that I highly recommend it!

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