Stepping back from the brink

Recent Articles

• 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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• Runs on the board

  2 November 2009 in International air force, Periodicals, Publications

  I’m pleased to announce that my first paper has been accepted for publication, by War in History. It’s about the international air force idea and is entitled ‘World police for world peace: British internationalism and the threat of a knock-out blow from the air, 1919-1945′. It won’t actually appear for some time, but under the [...]

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• Falmouth

  1 November 2009 in Pictures, Travel 2009

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

  After my little misadventure at Camelford, I started the next day out of position, and had a long way to go just to get back to my real hotel in Truro for a change of clothes. So for my day’s excursion I [...]

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• Do not procrastinate

  28 October 2009 in 1910s, Civil defence, Ephemera, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Periodicals, Pictures

  This is an advertisement from The Times, 26 May 1915, 5, for the ‘Life-Saving “CAVENDISH” Anti-Gas INHALER’ — in other words, a gas mask. It’s a surprisingly early attempt to combine (and to cash in on) the twin threats of aerial bombardment and chemical warfare — that is, ‘The Danger of GAS BOMBS’:
  You can effectually [...]

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