Morning guys.
Some of you might have heard rumours on the green oval grapevine that my long-running monthly column on Military Land Rovers, which ran in LRO from the January 1988 issue until the autumn of 1998 and then transferred across to LRM for the next 20ish years is finally being dropped from print publication.
One final column will run, insha'Allah, in the July 2018 issue of LRM - the topic is Lithuanian Army Defenders - but unless one of the other publishing houses makes me an offer for my services it is unlikely the story will continue.
When I penned the first column for Richard Thomas back in late 1987 it was decided that a mini-series of three might actually be needed to do the topic justice, but initial feedback was so positive that we decided to let it run until I ran out of ideas.
Incredible as it may seem, ideas are still flowing and subjects are still cropping up regularly, but unfortunately print magazine sales are not faring as well and that t'internet thingy is impacting quite seriously so lots of good things are coming to an end... for Defender production, the end just came a bit earlier.
Following the demise of COMBAT & SURVIVAL Magazine earlier this year, another victim of the slump in magazine sales, I created the JOINT-FORCES.com website as an outlet for my scribbles and snaps and this has been gaining popularity.
On Wednesday evening, after being told my LRM column was being dropped, I added a Modern Military Land Rovers section to my site and from now on I expect this is where my features will appear; Uncle Frank Elson, who was also recently dropped by LRM, kindly put the word out through his Facebook page and as a result yesterday I saw a massive increase in page views. Thanks Frank.
This new venture will not only give me an outlet for fresh military Land Rover stories - watch out for one on Jordanian Army Defenders following my recent trip to Amman - but it will also allow me to go back to the beginning and drag out some rarely seen old images from my extensive image library.
I'm really looking forward to it.
If interested, take a look here:- www.joint-forces.com/features/military-land-rovers
The plan is to add at least one article a month, with a few extras over the first couple of months, but if something interesting crops up I'll add a post at the earliest opportunity.
Bob