The only photograph taken of the author during the first half of the 20th Century.• Introduction • • • How this publication came to be•
I began collecting photographs of soldiers in the days when they were not popular or expensive.
With knowledge I had previously gained from military insignia collecting, I realised that I could glean a lot of information about the soldier in a good photograph.
From this my interest spread to non-military photographs based upon the popular fashions of the time. Gradually, and at first unintentionally, I gained a knowledge which enabled me to extract information from many photographs.
I hope to pass on some of this knowledge so you will be able to gain information from your own family photographs, whatever your
reason for doing so.
• There are of course no fashion regulations only trends.•
I chose a boundary of the years 1901 to 1953 which saw many changes and two major wars.
Born in 1910, by the time he was thirty five my father had spent almost one third of his life at war.
As a boy my own vocabulary necessarily covered subjects such as the Blitz and the Trenches.
There are many young people today who do not need or use the vocabulary of the first half of the twentieth century .Where I have used words or terms which the reader may not be familiar.
I have placed a 
mark on which the cursor ( in Microsoft® Explorer ) will display an
explanation.
Similarily I have used this feature for redundant words or those which I think some readers may like explaining.
I have intentionally excluded illustrations from other sources which have been published previously or are readily available from Picture Libraries.
With no exceptions the original photographs in this publication are from my own collection.
