Airfix: Celebrating 50 years of the greatest modelling kits ever made (Collins GEM) - Hardcover

Airfix models will be 50 years old in 1999. Only a very sad minority of men aged 30-50 did not make Airfix kits when they were boys. This book enables the rest of us to relive the glory days of our plastic air forces (or tank fleets) and perhaps to pass the torch to our children.

Superbly executed studio photographs show all the obscure and highly collectible kits as well as the best sellers, with illustrations of the packets, box art, adverts in 1960s and 1970s magazines, and a mass of period ephemera. The accompanying text charts the rise, fall and rise again of Airfix models. It’s a jolly read, a nostalgic reminder of kits long vanished, but with a happy ending: Airfix are now re-releasing 40 kits a year, bringing back some not seen for twenty years.

Only a very sad minority of men aged 30-50 did not make Airfix kits when they were boys. This book enables the rest of us to relive the glory days of our plastic air forces, navies or tank fleets. Superbly executed studio photographs show all the obscure and highly collectable kits as well as the best sellers, with illustrations of the packets, box art, adverts in 1960s and 1970s magazines, and a mass of period ephemera.

Arthur Ward investigates the rise fall and rise again of Airfix models. It's a nostalgic reminder of kits long vanished, but with a happy ending: Airfix are now releasing 40 kits a year, bringing back some not seen for twenty years.

For anyone who's ever watched an Airfix Messerschmitt plummet to its fiery doom from the bedroom window, 'Airfix' recaptures the magic of the modelling world.

Arthur Ward is chief executive of a busy London design and marketing company in central London. As a youngster, he spent many happy hours drawing, his imagination in freefall, creating weird and wonderful machines – mostly tanks, aircrafts and spaceships. In the 1960s he discovered that his private world could be given three-dimensional form via plastic kits, and since then his love of models (especially Airfix) has been unabated. For the last 20 years he has collected examples of early Airfix kits and, seeing nothing odd about this eccentric passion, 'saves them for posterity'.

Arthur's first book 'The Model World of Airfix' was published in 1984: a slim volume that only told part of the story, but prior to this it has been the standard history of the famous kit manufacturer. In 1990 he published 'A Nation Alone, ' a history of the Battle of Britain, and in 1997 'Resisting the Nazi Invader.'

Arthur Ward is married and has a daughter. The trio share their West Sussex home with two cats and, during the spring, and endless supply of field mice, shrews, voles and sparrows.