Reflections on an Ancient Book.

I'd alway thought the first book that I'd read on the American Revolution was some book by Henry Steele Commager, the title of which I have forgotten. I was a kid, ten or eleven and had somehow managed to get a copy out of the Adults' Library Section at Earlwood, NSW, near where I grew up. Except that was not the book I remember. The same book that I got out of Earlwood library so long ago, arrived at my place from the USA yesterday. It was Christopher Ward's The War of the Revolution, a 2 Volume boxed set, published by MacMillan in New York in 1952. I recognised it the moment I saw it.
I don't know what it was started me off reading history at such an early age, though I'm sure my father had something to do with it. He brought home a poster of the pictures of the kings and queens of England one day, and I pored over that poster for months, maybe even years, examining every picture in minute detail, wondering about each particular king and queen. I quickly learnt from my father that Henry VIII was a bad king, but somehow, despite the fact that she was Protestant, Elizabeth II was a good queen. The medieval kings were endlessly fascinating especially Richard Coeur de Lion and King John, because they had something to do with Robin Hood, (as played by Cornel Wilde, who I think also played John Paul Jones.) When I was thirteeen or younger I wanted to go and see a movie about Martin Luther (not the one based on the play by John Osborne) but I was forbidden it, quite vociferously. So, secretly, I became intrigued by this dreadful thing called the Reformation.
The other very early memory of history I have, apart from Robert Taylor in Ivanhoe and The Knights of the Round Table, and some engraved pictures in a wonderful edition of Walter Scott's Kenilworth, (which I never got around to reading until I was an adult) was the presence on the family bookshelf of Scott's red-covered A History of Australia, the title printed one the spine in black, font unknown. I remember determinedly ploughing through it at quite a young age, and getting bogged down with the NSW Robertson Land Acts of the 1870s. Up to that point I had been enthralled. So, I learnt early, that not all history is necessarily "interesting."
Amazing what the sight and smell of an old dark blue book with its blue spine and faded gold title in a red diamond square can evoke, a book which I have to thank for my perennial fascination with the War of American Independence, which, after all these years, I finally have on my bookshelf.