Thesis

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Biggles gets a website

6 October 2009 in Links, Quotes, Thesis by Brett Holman | 2 comments

Shirley Jacobs writes to inform me that the W E Johns Appreciation Society now has a website. It’s clearly quite an active group — there’s a magazine, Biggles Flies Again, published twice a year, and regular meetings with the next in Derby on 24 October. Via the site, one can keep up with W. E. Johns, Biggles, Worrals et al in the press, or explore the wider world of Bigglesiana on the web. (Which introduced me to a site devoted to Popular Flying, a magazine edited by Johns which featured articles by a number of airpower writers familar to me, such as J. M. Spaight, E. Colston Shepherd, Arch Whitehouse and Nigel Tangye.)

At one point I had managed to work in a brief reference to Biggles in my thesis, but sadly had to cut it for reasons of space. So here’s what I was going to say!

And even Biggles, the flying adventurer whose popularity with boys dates from this period, got into the act [of popularising the knock-out blow theory] in Biggles and the Black Peril (published 1935), foiling German plans to set up navigational beacons on the English coast in preparation for a sudden and massive air attack.1

  1. W. E. Johns, Biggles and the Black Peril (London: Red Fox, 2004 [1935]).

And so it ends …

27 May 2009 in Thesis by Brett Holman | 22 comments

I started this PhD not far off four years ago. Yesterday I received my examiners’ reports, and they both recommended that I ‘be awarded the PhD degree without further examination or amendment’ (though not without criticism, I must add). So now all that remains for me to do is submit two permanent bound copies to the university, and then I get to wear the much-coveted silly hat!

What’s next?

11 March 2009 in Blogging, Thesis by Brett Holman | 7 comments

So, the thesis is done, if not dusted. What do I do now?

The first thing to do is to earn a living. That’s now sorted, at least for the next few months; I’m doing a bit more IT work and, more interestingly, some sessional tutoring for the Arts Faculty. I last did that in 2006, so it’s useful to be able to burnish my teaching credentials. The two subjects I’m tutoring are called Total War in Europe: World War One and From Homer to Hollywood. I’m enjoying both very much so far. Total War in Europe is of course right up my alley: this week in tutes we discussed militarism before 1914, and next week we’ll be looking at the July Crisis. It’s hard to make that material uninteresting, but I’m the man for the job. From Homer to Hollywood is an interdisciplinary breadth subject (for those familiar with the terminology of the Melbourne Model) for first year students, which examines representations of war in a variety of poems, novels, plays, paintings and films. We’ve started off with the Iliad and The Song of Roland; later we’ll get to do War and Peace, Guernica and the film Gallipoli, among many other things. It’s a bit outside my comfort zone in terms of approach (more litcrit than historical) but I’m learning a lot and enjoying teaching the first years.

Then there’s the career. It’s not exactly a good time to be looking for academic jobs (when is it ever), but I’m going to give it a bash. I need to publish though, and if I can get, say, two papers in the pipeline this year, that will help with that. I’ve got plenty of ideas, but as yet little inclination to get stuck into writing again. That will have to change! There’s also the thesis-to-book process to begin, assuming it isn’t roundly rubbished by the examiners, of course.

Finally, there’s blogging. I do intend to keep writing at Airminded, although I’m not really sure what I’ll have to say — the problem with a research blog is that when you’re not doing research, you’re probably not going to be blogging that much either! That is something I’ll have to cope with though, as I’ve just been made a member of Cliopatria, in place of the now-defunct Revise and Dissent. It’s an honour but one which I’ll have to work at justifying.

A tale of two cityscapes

27 February 2009 in 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, After 1950, Books, Counterfactuals, Periodicals, Plots, Thesis by Brett Holman | 5 comments

Primary sources

Some more navel-gazingpost-thesis analysis. Above is a plot of the number of primary sources (1908-1941) I cite by date of publication. (Published sources only, excluding newspaper articles — of which there are a lot — and government documents. Also, it’s not just airpower stuff, though it mostly is.) I actually have no idea if it’s a lot or not, and I’m sure there are some selection effects in there. But, although I’ve certainly not attempted any sort of statistical analysis (nor will I!), I think some features of the plot reflect real features of the airpower literature of period, at least as it relates to the bombing of civilians.

Firstly, there’s a substantial increase in the number of sources in the 1930s, particularly from 1934 when there is a big peak. I argue in the thesis that this was only partly and indirectly due to the obvious reason (the arrival of Hitler in 1933). The more important reason was the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva, which ran between 1932 and 1934 (actually it went longer, but was dead in the water when Germany walked out). This roused airpower writers — whether pro- or anti-disarmament — to action, and gave them a reason to explain to the public the effects of bombing on cities. The slight rise from the late 1920s is also due to the conference, I think, or rather the optimistic Locarno-era preparations for it. The big peak in 1927 is a bit odd, though. Let’s call that an outlier.

The other two noticeable peaks are in 1909 and 1938. The first was very early in the public’s awareness of flight. That really started in 1908, but the possible defence implications came to the fore in 1909 — the founding of the Aerial League of the British Empire, the first phantom airship panic, the publication of the first serious books on the topic. And of course the dreadnought panic — it was a peak year for Anglo-German rivalry. The 1938 peak was the culmination of the building concern over the previous decade. What the plot doesn’t show is that, unlike previous years, it was largely sceptical, based on evidence from the Spanish Civil War. The Sudeten crisis that September showed that the fear of the knock-out blow still had a strong grip on the public and the press. But afterwards there’s a sharp decline in interest, which I maintain is real.

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Clouds

21 February 2009 in Plots, Thesis, Tools, Words by Brett Holman | 8 comments

Thesis wordle

Partly in lieu of the thing itself, but mainly just for fun, here are some word clouds of my thesis (generated with Wordle). So the above image shows the 75 most frequent words in the entire document, with the biggest word being the most common. (So it’s something to do with air and war and London then …) Below are clouds for each chapter. I just copied the text from the PDF file into Wordle; it works pretty well, except for some reason that process introduces weird breaks in some words. I don’t really spend a significant chunk of chapter 4 talking about counter-os and ensives!

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To-do list, 18 February 2009

18 February 2009 in Thesis by Brett Holman | 20 comments

  1. Submit PhD thesis. done

Parts, chapters, sections

30 January 2009 in Thesis by Brett Holman | 8 comments

The Next War in the Air: Civilian Fears of Strategic Bombardment in Britain, 1908-1941

Introduction
The knock-out blow; Imagining the next war in the air; Historiography of the knock-out blow; The structure of this thesis

I. Threats

1. Origins of the knock-out blow theory, 1893-1931
The doom of the great city, 1893-1916; Will civilisation crash? 1916-1931; Conclusion

2. Evolution of the knock-out blow theory, 1932-1941
Menace, 1932-1935; Towards Armageddon, 1935-1937; The air defence of Britain, 1937-1939; Victory in the air, 1939-1941; Conclusion

II. Responses

3. Adaptation
Psychology; Politics; Dispersal and evacuation; Protection; Conclusion

4. Resistance
Air defence; Anti-aircraft weapons; The counter-offensive; Conclusion

5. Internationalism
Limitation; Disarmament; Collective security; Internationalisation; Conclusion

III. Crises

6. Defence panics
The problem of public opinion; The press in early twentieth century Britain; Moral panics and defence panics; Defence panics, 1847-1914; Air panics, 1908-1941; Conclusion

7. The German air menace, 1913, 1922 and 1935
Emergence; Reactions; Resolution; Conclusion

8. Barcelona, Canton and London, 1938
Emergence; Reactions; Resolution; Conclusion

9. The battles of London, 1917 and 1940
Emergence; Reactions; Resolution; Conclusion

Conclusion

Satisfaction is …

21 December 2008 in Thesis by Brett Holman | 13 comments

… printing out four copies of a thesis draft.

What’s in a thesis title?

27 November 2008 in Thesis by Brett Holman | 14 comments

I received a letter from the university today, containing a form which is ominously entitled ‘Completion Report for PhD Candidates’. I guess they are expecting to receive a thesis from me in the not too distant future!

One of the things I have to finalise is the title of the thesis. According to the form, it’s currently called ‘The Impact of Airpower on the British People, 1908-1939′. That’s the bland title I picked more than 4 years ago, when I only had the vaguest idea of what I wanted to do, and it’s clearly influenced by — or lifted from — Alfred Gollin’s classic The Impact of Airpower on the British People and their Government, 1909-14. I’ve had a better one — or at least, more accurate one — picked out for a while, but wasn’t sure if it’s what I’m going to go with. But I’m out of time, and haven’t had any bright ideas, so I’m probably stuck with it now!

To my mind, a good title should be descriptive — it should give some idea of what it’s actually about. If it’s intriguing and memorable, that’s a bonus. With that in mind, here’s my provisional title:

The Next War in the Air: Britain and the Bomber, 1908-1941

So straightaway, this tells you the period and geographical focus — it’s early twentieth century Britain. The words ‘war’, ‘air’ and ‘bomber’ show that it’s about aerial warfare, specifically bombing. But the first clause as whole, ‘the next war in the air’, hopefully suggests that it’s about anticipations of bombing more than the actual thing.

I think that’s all fine. But I’m not sure about the next clause, ‘Britain and the bomber’. Yes, the thesis can be described as a study of the relationship between Britain and the bomber. I also chose it because I like alittle alliteration, and because it’s the title of an article I cite (as is ‘the next war in the air’). And it’s a nod to England and the Aeroplane, too. But is it promising too much? As a study of ‘Britain and the bomber’ it’s missing many things, such as (for example) nearly everything the RAF did or said on the subject. Or the Air Ministry or the rest of the government. That’s not a problem for the thesis (I hope!) because my subject is about popular, civilian, unofficial ideas about and responses to the threat of bombing, and there’s plenty of excellent histories of British air policy and RAF doctrine already out there. But maybe it’s a problem for the thesis title — it doesn’t get across the idea that I’m writing about the public sphere. I could tweak it a little, and say ‘British society’ instead of ‘Britain’, or something like that. I’m a sucker for a nice turn of phrase, though, and that would spoil the things I like about it …

The other thing to remember is that nobody will read the damn thing anyway, so it doesn’t really matter too much what I call it :)

The final countdown

25 October 2008 in Blogging, Thesis by Brett Holman | 6 comments

No, I’m not heading for Venus, nor am I travelling back in time in the USS Nimitz. But it is the final countdown nonetheless. I’m in the last few months of my PhD, and plan to submit it in late February 2009, just under four months away. I’m on track for that, I think — I’m halfway through the last chapter now, and then there’s just the conclusion to go, and then the process of serious redrafting begins. As far as word limit goes, the thesis as a whole is currently just under 80,000 words, which is just about perfect — according to the PhD handbook, I should ‘aim to write a thesis of 80,000 words’, but can write ‘up to 100,000 words without seeking special permission’. So it should end up comfortably within that range (though that may depend on how much of my grotesquely excessive verbiage I cut from the earlier chapters!)

Between that and the fact that I’m a little burned out after the interminable Sudeten crisis, I probably won’t be blogging as often as usual for the next little while. But I won’t be going on hiatus, so please check back every so often!

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