The Great Wall of My Coffee Table

Recent Articles

• The superweapon and the Anglo-American imagination — II

  20 November 2009 in 1930s, Aircraft, Periodicals, Quotes

  In June 1935, the Daily Express ran a story about three ’secret British air devices’. The source was a story in the Chicago Tribune by that paper’s London correspondent, John Steele:
  The devices are declared to be a new “mirage” smoke screen, a new seventeen-foot long anti-aircraft rifle, and a robot airplane which, controlled by wireless, [...]

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• The superweapon and the Anglo-American imagination — I

  17 November 2009 in 1940s, Periodicals, Pictures, Quotes

  Do these photos, taken early in the Battle of Britain, show a British mystery weapon? (I could just say “no”, but that wouldn’t be very interesting, would it.)

  The above photo appeared on the front page of an American newspaper, the St Petersburg Evening Independent, on 14 August 1940. The caption reads:
  This picture taken Aug. 11 [...]

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• Tremayne and Crowan

  12 November 2009 in Family history, Pictures, Travel 2009

  This post relates to my trip to England and Wales in September 2009.

  On my third day in Cornwall I avoided the usual tourist traps entirely, because I was in search of my ancestors’ home: a tiny little place called Tremayne, which is towards Land’s End, in the hundred of Penwith. To get there I [...]

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• The mystery car of Maldon

  7 November 2009 in 1910s, Civil defence, Periodicals, Phantom airships and other panics, Quotes, Rumours

  Here’s an interesting inversion of my usual phantom airship scare. The Zeppelin was real enough — it was L6, raiding Essex on the night of 15 April 1915. The phantom was instead a motor-car:
  Since the visit of the Zeppelin early on Friday morning the Maldon district has been full of rumours of mysterious motor-cars with [...]

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• Acquisitions

  6 November 2009 in Acquisitions, Books

  Christopher Andrew. The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5. London: Allen Lane, 2009. Most valuable for me on the Edwardian spy mania, but looks like a fun read for the rest of the thousand-odd pages.
  R. V. Jones. Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945. London: Penguin, 2009 [1978]. A reprint of this [...]

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