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• Something like a railway carriage

  13 March 2010 in 1910s, Books, Phantom airships and other panics

  On the last night of January 1916, a large force of seven Zeppelins crossed over the Wash into Norfolk, heading for the industrial cities of the Midlands. Unsure of their location, most of them instead dropped their bombs on relatively unimportant targets. But at least they got home okay. The defending aircraft of the RFC [...]

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• 61-67 Warrington Crescent, 8 March 1918

  7 March 2010 in 1910s, 1930s, Maps, Pictures

  This is Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, on the morning of 8 March 1918, after it had been hit by a 1-ton bomb dropped by a Giant bomber the night before — one of the largest to fall on London during the First World War and the most materially destructive. Twelve people were killed (including Lena [...]

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• Duxford and North Weald

  3 March 2010 in Pictures, Travel 2009

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

  The day after the Shuttleworth Collection visit, Trevor again kindly offered his services as chauffeur and guide, this time to Imperial War Museum Duxford. I’d only been to IWM London on my first visit to London; since IWM Duxford has a specific [...]

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• Acquisitions

  26 February 2010 in Acquisitions, Books

  Nick Smart. Neville Chamberlain. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2010. I’m not a big reader of biographies, partly because they often aren’t ‘historical’ enough and partly because they usually aren’t about the people I’m interested in. This one satisfies on both counts.

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• In the next war

  23 February 2010 in 1930s, Books

  ‘In the Next War’ was a short series of books published in Britain in 1938 and 1939, edited by Basil Liddell Hart. Unlike the earlier To-day and To-morrow books which attempted to predict things to come, these were much less eclectic and much more narrowly focused on future warfare: airpower; seapower; tanks, infantry and the [...]

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