The Don Turnbull Archive – UK Diplomacy Archive

Sometime in the early 2000’s, Richard Sharp invited me to come over to his house in Amersham to collect some Diplomacy material that Don Turnbull had passed on to him in the early 70’s. Don Turnbull was the founding father of postal Diplomacy in the UK as he had published Albion, the first Diplomacy zine on this side of the Atlantic. When I got there, Richard handed over six black ring binders and we headed for the pub.

Three of the ring binders contained issues of Diplomania and The Gamesletter (both edited by Don Miller) covering the period 1966 – 1972. The other three binders had various pages from early Diplomacy zines that Don had kept from the same period (1966-1972). Rather than keep a lot of complete back issues that were mainly game reports, Don had apparently just kept whatever it was that interested him that he thought he might want to refer to sometime. As most of this is pre-1971 there is an awful lot of discussion on the ambiguity in the rules of the regular game as well as a sprinkling of variants.

Richard told me that his own collection of Diplomacy zines had been largely destroyed when he left them in the loft of his old house at Elm Close and hadn’t noticed that the roof was leaking. But these six ring binders had survived.

So, for posterity I bring you Don Turnbull’s Archive, as it was handed to me. Each ring binder has been scanned into separate PDFs.

Volume 1

Diplomania – NFFF Games Bureau Diplomacy Division, edited by Don Miller

Diplomania Issue 1 (February 1966) – Issue 8 (May 1966)

Diplomania Issue 9 (June 1966) – Issue 13 (September 1966)

Diplomania Issue 14/15 (February 1967) – Issue 16/17 (June 1967)

Diplomania Issue 18 (October 1967) – Issue 19/20 (April 1968)

Volume 2

Diplomania – NFFF Games Bureau Diplomacy Division, edited by Don Miller

Issue 21 (November 1968) – Issue 25 (June 1969)

Issue 26 (August 1969) – Issue 28 (January 1970)

Issue 29 (March 1970) – Issue 31 (November 1970)