Capturing Clervaux, the book cover 
 
Title:  Capturing Clervaux - A Modellers Tale
Author:  Claude Joachim
Publisher:  Claude Joachim
ISBN: 978 287 996614 4
 
It was on the cover of a magazine whilst browsing through my local book shop some time ago, back in March 2008 to be precise, when I first laid eyes on a model that just astonished me and had me thinking that anything was possible in this hobby if you really committed yourself to a project. This was before I had seen inside the magazine and after picking up the publication to have a closer look I was so taken aback that I put the magazine back on the shelf and walked away, wondering if I could really ever hope to model to the same standard and extremes as the work of art I’d just seen.
 
I was fairly new to modelling back then and I put what I’d seen to the back of my mind to concentrate more on the kind of modelling that was within my grasp. Over the months that followed, a feeling that I wanted to one day attempt a huge project that I could be so proud of would become progressively stronger and until this day it’s still something I plan to do. So when Claude Joachim came on to the Military Modelling forum a little while back, and announced a book which was to cover his building of Clervaux I was over the moon and jumped at the chance to get a copy of this book. 

When the book arrived I was immediately pleased to see the quality of the pages and the clarity of the pictures within. It’s always been a major gripe of mine when a book on an art form like modelling has pictures that do not do the models within it any justice, so to have this gripe put aside from the outset was a great start. There’s just over eighty pages to Capturing Clervaux with the last fifteen pages dedicated to photographs of the finished Château itself. The majority of pictures in the book are colour with only a few reference pictures being in B&W. It starts off with a couple of pages that cover the WWII battle for Clervaux which was something I wasn’t particularly knowledgeable on, so it was nice to have that bit of history to set the scene for the build to come and add that little bit of extra depth to each section.
 
I won’t spoil things by going into detail on what the build pages do cover, I’ll just say that Claude has covered everything you could possibly hope for on the creation of the Château and this book has opened my eyes to many new techniques that can be applied to models of any size. The scale of the project comes across very well and the problems faced by Claude because of the sheer size of the model are very apparent, which will be a great help to anyone thinking of taking on a project of greater than normal proportions.
 
Anyone who attended Euro Militaire in 2007 may recall seeing the model itself, when it was on display inside the competition rooms, and the many admiring inspections it received.
 
All in all this is a more than worthy addition to any modellers library. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of this book, finding it to be both refreshing and well written but most of all to me, the book of ‘the’ build, is simply inspiring.
 
Mark.
 

Grab yourself a copy of Capturing Clervaux - A Modeler’s Tale here