Everybody loves flying aircraft carriers — well, I do, anyway! Above is the closest the British got to the concept. In October 1926, the R33 (above) was used to carry and launch two Gloster Grebe fighters (below). These were relatively heavy aircraft, weighing over a ton each; earlier experiments had used only a single, lighter […]
Since coming home from London, I keep coming across interesting things which I could have seen while I was there, but didn’t. Which is not at all surprising, given the city’s size and history, but it’s true even in the relatively restricted confines of Bloomsbury, where I was staying and got to know fairly well
Part of the methodology of the Mass-Observation project was the tracking of paranormal beliefs, perhaps a reflection of its anthropological inspiration. In War Begins at Home, published early in 1940 by Mass-Obs, the following article is reprinted from the December 1939 issue of Prediction (a magazine devoted to astrology, psychic powers and the like): ON
From Peter Stansky, The First Day of the Blitz: September 7, 1940 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 10: Bertrand Russell wrote in 1936 that when London was bombed it would be “one vast raving bedlam, the hospitals will be stormed, traffic will cease, the homeless will shriek for help, the city will
A poster from the 1935 general election, showing, quite literally, the shadow of the bomber. The National Government was a coalition comprising the Conservatives and two splinter parties, National Labour and the Liberal Nationals. With Stanley Baldwin at its head, the National Government went to the people on a platform of peace and prosperity. The
From the Manchester Guardian, 29 September 1938, p. 6: We are hearing and reading so much (writes a correspondent) of people talking in the streets, in public vehicles, and wherever they meet about the international situation that perhaps “Miscellany” may care to preserve for posterity this perfectly true and unvarnished record of a conversation overheard
Some more plots from the talk I gave the other way. I was trying to think of a way to illustrate in concrete terms the problem of speed for the air defence of Britain. I came up with the following: Simply put, it shows the length of time it would have taken for an attacking
An illuminated tram-car which is touring Blackpool as a recruiting agent for the A.R.P. services.1 Every autumn in Blackpool, the promenade is festooned with miles of multicoloured lights — the ‘Blackpool Illuminations‘. Part of this display involves similarly-decorated trams — the ‘Blackpool illuminated trams‘. (Or so I read, I’ve obviously never been.) This particular example
The talk at Earth Sciences went well, I think. It was a good-sized audience and they seemed interested in what I had to say, judging by the questions afterwards. I also found out that one of the honorary fellows had actually lived in London during the war, and though only a child could remember watching
I’m currently looking at the air menace as portrayed in the press during the Sudeten crisis in late September-early October 1938. The interesting thing is that there isn’t much, at least not directly. There was very little scaremongering material of the type so prevalent in 1934-5, or even earlier in 1938, for example, even in
