A room exactly like this one is where snooker came from. The game was devised in 1875 by British Army officers in India — the credit goes to Sir Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain of the 11th Devonshire Regiment, at Stone House in Ootacamund — and he did not invent it so much as splice it together out of two games already being played on the mess table: pyramids, with its fifteen reds, and black pool, in which you nominated and potted a particular ball. The name came from the room rather than the game. "Snooker" was army slang for a raw recruit, and Chamberlain used it about a young officer who had made a mess of a shot. The insult attached itself to the sport and never came off. What is odder is how long nobody knew. The Billiards Association and Control Club had standardised the rules in 1919, and it was not until a letter appeared in The Field on 19 March 1938 — sixty-three years after the event — that Chamberlain's part was publicly established. One thing to settle while we are here: he is not the Prime Minister. Different man, different family, and he was inventing a billiards variant in the hills of southern India while the other Neville Chamberlain was still a child in Birmingham.

The set gives you the whole room. Two officers in scarlet mess jackets with yellow facings, black overalls and black ties — one bent low over his cue in a smoking cap, the other standing with his own cue upright, watching the shot with the particular blankness of a man who thinks it will miss. The third figure is the mess servant, in a red coat with a blue sash and a white turban, carrying a tray of drinks; British messes across the subcontinent ran on Indian staff, and this one is given the same care as the officers rather than being treated as furniture. The table is racked and spotted ready to break, and the carpet is included. It is the companion piece to The Bar at the Officer's Mess, and the two together make one room. Elsewhere in the same army and the same country, the Royal Artillery Elephant Battery, India shows what these officers' working day looked like, and the Gordon Relief Expedition what it looked like when it went wrong.

Model: T107 / Tradition of London / 54mm (1/32) scale / 3 figures with snooker table and carpet

All hand painted Toy Soldier sets packed in the Classic Tradition Red Boxes. All Toy Soldiers cast in quality white metal, and individually hand painted in gloss enamels.

Please allow 2-3 weeks delivery.