I’ve never been to a Cliopatria Awards ceremony, but I imagine it is full of glitz and glamour, tuxedos and ball gowns. As the best history bloggers of the past year, the winners certainly deserve to be feted in this way. But instead of my applause all I can give them is a little recognition, […]
Though Bardia has not yet fallen, Australian infantry and British troops have broken through its perimeter and taken 5000 Italian soldiers prisoner in a dawn attack (The Times, 4). The Australians, who hitherto had taken part only in small-scale raids, had the honour of leading the way through gaps caused first by our guns and
A Bomber Command raid Wednesday night against Bremen, Germany’s second-largest seaport, is described by the Manchester Guardian as ‘R.A.F. Answers London Fire Raid‘ (5). The dropping of 20,000 incendiary bombs seems to be the basis for this. Whether the Bremen raid would technically count as a ‘reprisal’ (from the British point of view, anyway) is
The Mediterranean theatre of war has seen a lot of action in recent days, as these headlines from The Times (4) show. While the Italian outpost at Bardia is besieged from land, sea and air, British armoured units are approaching Tobruk, 70 miles to the west. On Monday night, Italian warships at Taranto were bombed
The Manchester Guardian might have allowed itself a moment for self-congratulation here, as its previous call for compulsory fire-watchers appears to have been heeded (5). (Though it was not alone, as an article on page 10 quotes similar commentary from The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail.) The decision was
The true extent of the destruction caused by Sunday night’s air raid on London has now become clear (the story has now moved to first place on page 4 of The Times, though in the Guardian the ‘Second Great Fire of London‘ shares that honour with news of RAF raids on Germany and Italy). The
Xmas wins! Gus Officer. Six O’Clock Diamond: The Story of a Desert Harrasser. Northcote: Woolhouse Press, 2008. The memoir of a Second World War RAAF Kittyhawk pilot, who in 1942 was shot down over the Western Desert and spent the rest of the war as a POW. Roland Perry. The Australian Light Horse: The Magnificent
President Roosevelt had one of his famous ‘fireside chats‘ (i.e. over the radio) with the American people last night. This one would seem to deserve its lead-story status in the Manchester Guardian, as he firmly committed the United States to Britain’s side in the war, even if not as a non-combatant but as the ‘arsenal
Today seems to be a slow news day, if such a thing can exist in the middle of a world war. The Observer leads today with a non-story (7). Free French radio reports that Hitler has demanded the handover to Germany of the Vichy fleet. Petain’s response to this is unknown; for that matter, so
Following Ross’ suggestion I’ve plugged airminded itself into the Google Ngram Viewer (for British English over 1920-2000 with a smoothing of 3). The word wasn’t used until c. 1925 and grew in popularity until the end of the Second World War. It then began its long descent. Around 1960 its heyday was definitely over and
