Bruce Quarrie (1947 in London – 4 September 2004) was an English writer and author on wargaming and militaria topics.
Career
Quarrie attended Kingsbridge Grammar School in Devon before going on to study English at Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating in 1968.[1] 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. He wrote over 40 titles, mainly on the Second World War militaria.
Quarrie was an active wargamer. His 1974 book Napoleonic Wargaming brought the hobby to wide attention. Quarrie owned a large miniature army of wargames figures, including the entire Westphalian army of the Napoleonic era.
Criticism about his choice of subject
In his 1997 book 'Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach' (described as "too flawed to be recommended as an undergraduate text"[2]), historian S.P. MacKenzie describing Quarrie's works on the Waffen-SS mentions him as a popular author who suggested that the elite Waffen SS units demonstrated toughness, innovation and courage, which along with focused aggression, changed the course of the war. Mackenzie writes that "as older generation of Waffen-SS scribes has died off, a new, post-war cadre of writers has done much to perpetuate the image of the force as a revolutionary European army" and includes Quarrie in this group.[3]
