The loss of a friend - a tribute to Duncan Macfarlane

 

This is based on a few words I said at the gathering at the Sir John Borlase Warren following Duncan's funeral last week. Others were more eloquent, Dan Faulconbridge and Richard Tyndall both spoke movingly at the funeral itself, John Stallard quoted Bryan Ansell in saying that Duncan's magazines had probably been instrumental in saving the historical side of the bobby during the 80s and early 90s and making it what it is today. Rich Clarke and Peter Dennis also paid tribute to the influence he has had on the modern wargames scene, both here and internationally.

But these are my personal thoughts and memories:

Duncan was a man in many ways set firmly in the past, his knowledge of history, particularly military history, was both deep and diverse, but I believe he was also a very modern man, being what we would nowadays call a great networker, a facilitator, and an influencer.

In the days since his sudden death (and we now know it was from heart failure) many have paid tribute to the way in which he was able to encourage them to write, or to do things they didn't have the confidence to do. My own example of this is from when I first picked up Miniature Wargames first issue in WH Smiths, and having recently moved to Newark myself, was amazed to find that it was published by a chap who also lived in Newark. Being pre-internet days I managed to track him down and asked if there was a wargames club in town. Duncan's answer was "No, why don't you start one?" And so, with his support, but with the very clear understanding that I was to be in charge and do everything, we started the Newark Irregulars.

Likewise, a couple of years later (in 1986), the National Wargames Championships were looking for a place to hold the regional heats for their competition. Duncan suggested we should host them, and so the Partizan show was begun, with a few traders and a couple of demo games alongside the competition games. Duncan took a few photos of the demo games for the magazine, and this led to a snowball effect of more people wanting to bring games, and do their very best to make them look as amazing as possible because they knew it meant they would feature in MW, and later Wargames Illustrated. Duncan's role in actually organising the show quickly faded away, leaving myself and Richard to carry on, but we know that it was his great gift in networking and facilitating that established the show's reputation for 'aesthetically pleasing games' and put it in the niche it still occupies. As far as I know Duncan and I are the only people who had attended every single show (and there have been fifty so far!), so when we hold the show again, hopefully later this year, it will definitely feel very weird...

My memories of gaming with Duncan are entirely positive, he was always an interesting opponent, usually out-thinking me, of course. When he brought out his range of Marlburian figures, under the Stratagem name, we had many happy games in his overcrowded house using a set of homebrew rules. I can't remember much about those rules except that if you threw a 'double 1' for an artillery misfire we called that a 'melancholy accident', based on a phrase that he had read in a contemporary account.

Others have talked about Duncan as being like an Uncle or a father figure, for me he was more like the big brother I never had. He always seemed to know more people, or more stuff than I did, but was always happy to share his knowledge in a warm and friendly way. He was also happy to tease me about stuff, but always with a kindly twinkle in his eye.

That friendly comforting presence, always there in the background, is what I will be missing the most...