Reliability of Osprey Books as Historical Source

Recently I've been digging into Osprey titles for a few diverse fields of history ranging from Rome to the Medieval Era. What surprises me is that despite the apparent reliability alot of criticism hangs around occasionally online, the last one I've seen in the .ORG being about the topic of Medieval ski soldiers.

I wonder how reliable is Osprey & its drawings for serious in-depth historical research? I consider it good and concise for info and the drawings are very good. Some EB units like the Samnites are even based on Osprey books, so should I take this as a testament to their quality or just read it with a high dosis of skepticism?

It depends entirely on the book. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases even if the colour plates are based on reliable historical information, the artists can misinterpret the evidence, causing odd reconstructions. In other cases, the authors are simply not that informative on certain subjects.

What Meinpanzer said, with the addition that I find that the authors are often candid about how speculative the reconstructions are. But I bet that few people actually read the text very carefully, which makes the Osprey books the Playboy of the classics world.

Osprey illustrations are primarily aimed at miniatures wargamers who want an idea of how to paint their armies. These people tend to go in for obsessive detail about uniforms from perhaps the 17th Century onwards, but as you go further back, things tend to get shakier. Having said that, I've not picked any up for years and years.

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Originally Posted by MeinPanzer

It depends entirely on the book. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases even if the colour plates are based on reliable historical information, the artists can misinterpret the evidence, causing odd reconstructions. In other cases, the authors are simply not that informative on certain subjects.

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Peter Connolly published a couple of books with drawings of his own. i have his Greece and Rome at war.

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Originally Posted by Sarkiss

Peter Connolly published a couple of books with drawings of his own. i have his Greece and Rome at war.

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I have access to it in the lake jackson library-good book actually.

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Originally Posted by Sarkiss

Peter Connolly published a couple of books with drawings of his own. i have his Greece and Rome at war.

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Yes, Peter Connolly's illustrations are usually quite good, but he's never published any books with Osprey.

I believe Angus McBride is/was famous for his unrealistic (though pretty and well drawn) pictures, which often depicted only the fiest and rarest costumes and armour.

Anything by Turnbull and Sekunda is a guaranteed good read, I reccomend Turnbull's The Art Of Rennaisance warfare by Roundhill books.

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Originally Posted by Bopa the Magyar

I believe Angus McBride is/was famous for his unrealistic (though pretty and well drawn) pictures, which often depicted only the fiest and rarest costumes and armour.

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Any inaccuracies in plates should not be blamed on the artist, but rather on the author. The artists just work from the information provided by the authors, and barring communications difficulties and mistaken interpretations of evidence provided, any errors can pretty much be attributed to the author. Angus McBride did a lot of both very good reconstruction work and shoddy reconstructions, but in every case he did his job as an artist and provided a quality painting with the specifications provided.

And a damn good artist at that.

But there is a reason it takes 3½+ years at University to study history, thing is people like most of us have transversed the ford from ordinary interested to whom popular history is enough, to more knowledgable who wants more and concise accuracy. In doing so it would be good for all of us to do some basic source criticism studies and thus gain insight on our own on how to evaluate sources. I did that even before I spent those five years at university and it would benefit most of us greatly ;-)

Depends on the books really. But in my opinion it seems most ancient & medieval illustrations are based off evidence from various sources (archeological, medieval illustrations etc). The book on Moors in Spain is a good example I recall.

The Osprey books are not bad, and in my opinion they are good as introductionary books for warfare.

Heh, from what I have seen, not just "some" units are based on those books, but at least half the EB units come from those books. That is the only reason I have so many of them, because I simply love to see those "EB" units outside of EB. Other than the pictures, I do not have a high opinion of them. They are simply too brief and general.

Krusader really hit a point there. They are a more than marvellous introduction, but for most of us, they are too brief. They are still entertaining, but that is mainly about all.

Although their drawings concerning the Chinese army is rather poor in my opinion. They even made a number of mistakes in regards to the Qin Army, one of the most well documented army in the world!

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Originally Posted by Aemilius Paulus

Heh, from what I have seen, not just "some" units are based on those books, but at least half the EB units come from those books.

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Well, I would argue that EB units don't come from Osprey, but both EB units and Osprey units derive from the same source, thus resulting in a very similar look.

Osprey books have some restrictions but are very often very good sources to begin with. Some books are more trustable than others. But in the average they are a fantastic and compact chance to get a visuable imagination.

Some of my thoughts, in no special order:

The single most important advantage of the Ospreys is imho in the photos, not the paintings. The books offer a plentitude of sources, f.e. of Greek vase paintings covering certain aspects of war. It would be very time consuming for the average person to assemble the same from other more general sources.

To some authors: Nick Secunda f.e. is a very originally thinker. I like his books very much. I think he is very trustworthy. Some aspects can of course be criticised but this is normal. It is science, nobody knows for sure. Peter Conolly for example invented the glued linen armor, for which we have no (I mean no!) ancient or medieval evidence. I think it never ever existed in the glued form but many people are happy with it because it could explain some aspects of Greek armor in ancient paintings.

Back to Ospreys. Sometimes I saw reconstructions more critically than others. In the book Elite "The Ancient Greeks" of Nick Secunda/Angus McBride in one picture a Cretan archer is depicted. His chiton is reconstructed in black with the argument that black is a normal colour in more modern Greek costumes. This is in my opinion a bit strange. We know some painted grave stelae of Cretan mercenaries (two imho?). The chitons were white (wool white I think, the normal colour of natural wool). So in the painting a white chiton would have been a better alternative imho.

In the same book Greek ekdromoi are depicted in Thrakia in the snow with bare feet. Although I am of the opinion that hoplites often fought barefoot I don't think they would have done so in the winter in snowy terrain. So you have to take the paintings always with a grain of salt.

Some other Osprey authors wrote also very good Osprey books imho, f.e. David Nicolle, Graham Sumner, Duncan Campbell to name only a few. The artist I like most is Graham Turner who made fantastic paintings. Unfortunately he is more busy in the medieval timeframe.

Some Ospreys offer almost the only simply available source of a certain theme. For example the MAA about the Irish wars in the 16th century. I'm interested in Irish military and costume history of the time before 1600 and the book was a good starter for me (despite its -sorry- abominable paintings) because literature about it is (was) not easily available in Germany. It offers compact information and contains all twelve woodcuts of Derricke which is alone worth the price.

Same for many other Osprey books. So I don't like the general bashing of these books that some people seems to cultivate.

Osprey have very nice images, but historically they are often very ureliable.
See for example Gladiators (Warrior): beautiful illustrations, but the text is totally unreliable, even some picture caption is wrong!!!!
Napoleonic Osprey too (i know them well) are really incomplete!

I just DL-ed some from E-mule to have a look at subjects I have some slight knowledge off. I found they vary wildly. The ones about the Late republican and early Imperial Army was ... unimpressive and far too reliant on Vegetius (one was passable though, citing other sources and not passing much off as knowledge that we do not know with certainty- the one illustrated by Angus McBride, who BTW was dissapointing considering his other great work), while the one on Hürtgen Forest fighting (late 1944) was ok.