After the Exeter conference my holiday proper began. I travelled by train down to Cornwall, to Truro where I made my base for the next few days. Truro is the county seat, though it’s not a big town by any means. (Nowhere in Cornwall is, which is part of its charm.) It does have the […]
An advertisement for Imperial Airways from the Daily Telegraph, 30 January 1935, emphasising its role in delivering airmail to the Empire: twice weekly to ‘the East’ (presumably India, Singapore, Hong Kong), once a week to Australia (a service which had only just begun the previous month), and twice weekly to Cape Town. A lot of
Evelyn August. The Black-out Book: One-hundred-and-one Black-out Nights’ Entertainment. Oxford and New York: Osprey, 2009 [1939]. A facsimile reprint containing jokes, puzzles, games, trivia and other bits and pieces: giving a lower-brow (and I’m sure more accurate) impression of what people actually did in shelters than this. Evelyn August was the pseudonym of Sydney and
Later the same day that I arrived at Heathrow and visited Salisbury, I was down in the southwest of England — Exeter, to be precise. I was there for a conference but arrived a day early so I could have a poke around. There are indeed some things very worth seeing in Exeter, although the
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] While in Wales recently I chanced upon a copy of Robert Stradling’s Your Children Will Be Next: Bombing and Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008). My description at the time was that this book ‘Argues that the memory of Guernica has obscured earlier atrocities, especially
I bought these at Foyles a few hours before my plane was due to depart, and had them mailed to me. Not necessarily the cheapest way to go, but I was in a hurry! Jeremy Black. Rethinking Military History. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2004. Probably nobody is better qualified to write a book with
It must be about to time to start posting photos from my trip (blame Alan!) My first destination was in Wiltshire, and is best introduced by Nigel Tufnel: In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived a strange race of people: the Druids. No one knows who they were, or what
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.
William le Queux‘s The Invasion of 1910 is today one of the best-remembered of the Edwardian invasion novels (at least to anyone interested in the topic). Not because of any literary value — very few people read it today, and I can’t blame them — but because of its contemporary success. It was commissioned by
I bought these the other day, about 17000 km away — except for one which was a gift. The Battle of Britain: An Air Ministry Account of the Great Days from 8th August — 31st October 1940. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1941. Thanks, Simon! Angus Calder. The People’s War: Britain 1939-1945. London: Pimlico, 1992
