Michael (l) and Alan Perry. Photo courtesy of Joe Piddington.
It’s always lovely for me when I get to interview people on the show who I not only admire, but can also count as friends. This is certainly the case with the most famous twins in wargaming, Alan and Michael Perry.
About as close as you can get to household names in our hobby, Alan and Michael started making miniature people when they were very young and never stopped. Their remarkable ability led them straight from school to Games Workshop, where they became employees numbers 2 and 3 and their stellar careers began, careers which took in work for Citadel Miniatures and Wargames Foundry and, since 2001, their own highly successful Perry Miniatures.
Self-taught in this exacting art form, the twins have tackled a huge variety of projects, including fantasy and sci-fi subjects as well as their first love, historical miniatures. As you will hear, they tackle many projects in tandem, but also have their personal preferences which means that they are never bored.
Michael’s mastery of the 28mm miniature wasn’t even blown off course when he lost an arm whilst reloading a medieval artillery piece during a re-enactment at Crécy, a memory which he and Alan recall with both remarkable good humour and some grisly detail – be warned! Astonishingly, within days of suffering an amputation of his better arm, Michael was learning to sculpt with his left hand, perhaps even better than ever before.
Our conversation forms a broad introduction to everything Perry, including some of their non-wargaming pursuits, in a way that provides an introduction for the uninitiated, but also provides surprising glimpses behind the scenes even for those of you who know their work well. One of the highlights for them was working on the Lord of the Rings project, creating authorised miniatures to accompany the game created in tandem with the series of movies, which also led to a deep and lasting friendship with director Peter Jackson.
This really was a kitchen table conversation – Alan and Michael were sitting in Michael’s kitchen in Nottingham, with a number of distractions at times – but I hope you find our chat entertaining and informative despite the technical challenges that have kept me up late into the night editing!
Henry
Alan and Michael’s Wikipedia page
Mustering the Troops – the remarkable Chunuk Bair project in New Zealand
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