Being around askhistorians and looking at videos made by actual historians on the profession really got me to rethink my approach to learning history. For the most part I've been into light reading and watching documentaries and occasionally reading a book on the subject (which I realize I should be doing more of), and since I am a fan of military history, I am curious to know if you think Osprey Publishing follows good history practices or does if anyone here has issues with their methods.
I will leave it to others who know the entire series better than me, but I had a bunch of those when I was in high school.
One I want to single out is Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars by David Nicole and illustrated by Angus McBride (who by the way I think is personally responsible for like half of the series' artwork). I will single this one out because it was one of my favorites, but also one that was figuratively torn to shreds when I actually studied Medieval European history in undergrad. Namely, the timeline and events it describes are basically completely made up.
The book has a nice short history (complete with chronological timeline) that discussed the history of Sub-Roman Britain. Once the Romans leave, you learn that the Britons were ruled by Vortigern, then by Ambrosius, and then by Arthur, who defeated the Anglo-Saxons and turned back their invasion at the Battle of Mount Badon in AD 517.
Basically, no documentary evidence supports any of that. We are not clear that Vortigern, Ambrosius and Arthur were separate people, names for the same person, or even if any such person with any of those names actually existed. We have no hard dates for anything in the "Anglo Saxon Wars", and we're not even really sure that such a full-scale invasion actually occurred, with most current historians thinking no (in fairness to the Osprey volume, I remember it mentioning somewhere deep in the text something to this effect). Pretty much all the documentary evidence from the period is Gildas' On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, some chronicles from at least a century after that, and Bede's history a century after that, plus some legends and folktales recorded much later. So most of the history as presented in that particular volume is speculative, but it is presented as a precise and known thing, which is extremely misleading.
There is also the matter that the illustrations sometimes veer into racist territory. For example, here is the old cover for Queen Victoria's Enemies: South Africa, which is definitely leaning into a very particular point of view by showing wild-eyed Zulu warriors about to spear a prone British soldier. In fairness, it looks like a newer edition has toned things down to be a more neutral depiction. In contrast, the German Wehrmacht is depicted in consistently awesome poses.
As far as overall historic practies: it doesn't have endnotes or footnotes, which should be a warning - I don't have any handy and so I don't recall if they have a bibliography at the end or not. David Nicole (who wrote a bunch of the titles) does have a PhD, but as an historian of art and architecture, and roamed across a vaster amount of areas and periods than any academic historian worth her salt would actually claim expertise in, and should be very clearly citing the secondary and primary sources she uses.
I would treat them very cautiously.
Some Osprey Authors like Steven Zaloga and Robert Forczyk have pretty good reputations. I can't speak for the entire Osprey catalog though. It would be weird if they didn't have some controversial or low quality work given the sheer amount of work they publish.
I'd just take it on an author by author basis, check author bios for academic credentials, see what's in their bibliographies and notes and so forth.