Acquisitions

David Oliver. Hendon Aerodrome: A History. Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1994. Hendon was probably THE most important site for the cultivation of airmindedness in Britain up to the Second World War -- first as the home base of pioneer aviator Claude Grahame-White and friends, then from the 1920s as the location of the annual RAF Pageant, always attracting huge crowds. Today it's the location of the RAF Museum. This well-illustrated little book covers all of Hendon's aerial history, but of course gives pride of place to the Grahame-White and RAF Pageant days.

Malcolm Smith. Britain and 1940: History, Myth and Popular Memory. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Looks like another interesting entry in the burgeoning field of -- what do you call it? Mythologisation of war? Memorialisation? Studies of that stuff, anyway. By the author of British Air Strategy Between the Wars. The second chapter, entitled "The projection of war, 1918-1939" most closely relates to my own research.

John W. R. Taylor. Combat Aircraft of the World From 1909 to the Present. New York: Paragon, 1979. This was recommended to me by members of a mailing list -- I wanted a fairly comprehensive guide to combat aircraft that didn't just focus on the well-known ones from the World Wars, so that it would have the obscure French bombers and Polish fighters (or whatever!) of the 1920s and 1930s that never saw action. And this book is pretty much exactly what I was looking for (and more besides), and it's very well-illustrated too.

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