Bruce Quarrie

Who was Bruce Quarrie?

Bruce Quarrie was an English author and historian. He studied English at Peterhouse College, Cambridge University and graduated with honours in 1968. He became a journalist with the Financial Times and then in 1972 joined Patrick Stephens Limited, a Cambridge specialist publisher, as editor of Airfix magazine, which PSL produced. He wrote the first of his many books about wargaming in 1974 and in 1986 he became a full-time writer on this and military subjects generally. He wrote over 40 titles, mainly on Second World War history, and edited many more.

Quarrie had a reputation for painstaking research and attention to detail, reflected in the high prices many of his out-of-print works still fetch on the second-hand market. His definitive Encyclopedia of the German Army was even published in German. Historian and novelist Len Deighton described him as "one of our most meticulous and well-informed historians."

Bruce Quarrie was an active wargamer and a member of clubs in, successively, north-east London, Cambridge, and Wellingborough. His 1974 book Napoleonic Wargaming, based on the north-east London club's house rules, brought the hobby to wide attention. Quarrie owned a large miniature army of wargames figures, including the entire Westphalian army of the Napoleonic era, scaled down in size as set out in his own published rules.