Peter Almond. 90 Years of the Air League: The Story of British Aviation. London: Air League, n.d. [1999]. This history of the Air LeagueThe major British aviation advocacy group, founded in 1909 as the Aerial League of the British Empire, then known as the Air League of the British Empire from 1918 until some time in the 1950s. is very slim - only 30 pages in all - and there are no references, but there's still a lot of valuable info in here that can't be found anywhere else (at least until I get to the Air League's archives myself, and/or find a copy of Gibbs-Smith's version, written 40 years earlier). Some nice pictures too. Graciously provided by the Air League itself.

Yes, I went a bit crazy with the credit card ...

Hugh Addison. The Battle of London. London: Herbert Jenkins, n.d. [1923]. The Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy attempts to start a revolution in London, aided by a surprise air raid from Germany. But they didn't count on the RAF's massive retaliatory response on Berlin ...

G. Cornwallis-West. The Woman Who Stopped War. London: Hutchinson & Co., n.d [1935]. A 'Vivid, provoking and brilliantly written' tale of passion, love, deceit, betrayal, feminism, pacifism and The Women's Save the Race League - or so I gather from the blurb!

John Hammerton, ed. War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time. London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [ca. 1935]. This is a real prize - it's the entire run of a part-work magazine published over the period 1935-6 (I would guess), a profusely illustrated, popular guide to contemporary aviation. Although civil aviation and the pioneers of flight are by no means ignored, as the name suggests the emphasis is on military aviation. There's a lot on the Great War, including 11 articles on 'Air raiders of the great cities', summaries of the world's 'aerial armadas', and half a dozen articles on future air war, all of them on the horrors of city bombing: 'Death from the skies', 'The doom of cities', 'When war does come: terrifying effects of gas attacks', and so on. I could hardly resist, could I?

Martin Hussingtree [Oliver Baldwin]. Konyetz. Hodder & Staughton, n.d. [1924]. Oliver Baldwin was the son of Conservative PM Stanley Baldwin - he had been captured by the Bolsheviks while an advisor to the Armenian army after WWI. He became a convert to socialism afterwards, and wrote this strange novel forecasting the end of Western civilisation ("konyetz" is Russian for "the end") as the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy steamrollers its way across Europe and into a Labour-governed Britain, bombing and gassing as it goes.

Neville Jones. The Beginnings of Strategic Air Power: A History of the British Bomber Force 1923-39. London: Frank Cass, 1987. Another standard reference, which I always confuse with his other book, The Origins of Strategic Bombing. Looks to have some useful stuff I haven't come across before, for instance the phosgene scare of May 1928.

Noel Pemberton-Billing. Air War: How to Wage It. Aldershot and Portsmouth: Gale & Polden, 1916. 'With some suggestions for the defence of great cities.' This probably helped P-B to be elected as the 'member for air'; the cover is dominated by a rather dashing photo of him, monocle firmly in place. 'Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!'

A.O. Pollard. Black Out. Hutchinson & Co., n.d. [1938]. Captain Pollard was a successful writer of crime novels as well as a holder of the Victoria Cross. Although not an airman, he wrote several aviation-themed novels, including this one about an anti-ARP group which is a front for a criminal gang. The Times Literary Supplement says that it 'Will prove very much to the taste of air-minded readers', and that's good enough for me.

E.F. Spanner. The Broken Trident. London: E.F. Spanner, 1929. A comparatively rare example of a critic of the fear of city bombing - Spanner didn't believe that any nation would be immoral enough to do it (again, that is). The novel is about the danger posed by a resurgent German air force for the Royal Navy (there's a great piece of cover art showing German biplane torpedo bombers peeling off to attack a column of battleships) - apparently his argument was that airpower was too important to be left to the RAF, and should be the RN's responsibility!

H.G. Wells. The Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1933. This needs no introduction ... although I didn't realise it was subtitled 'The Ultimate Revolution'. It's quite fitting, though.

Harold Nicolson. Public Faces: A Novel. London: Constable, 1932. A fantasy by the well-known diplomat, politician and diarist (and husband of Vita Sackville-West) about what might happen in 1939 if his political friends were in power, and the storm clouds of war gathering again. I'm not quite sure if it technically counts as an air war novel, as I haven't read it yet, but if not, it is at least from a related genre: the plot revolves around the development and use of atomic bombs (by Britain) - an early use of the concept - which nearly pushes the world into the abyss.

David Butler and Gareth Butler. Twentieth-Century British Political Facts, 1900-2000. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Eighth edition. The bible. Well, a bible, anyway.

Zara Steiner. The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. If this is up to the standards of her Britain and the Origins of the First World War, then it's an instant classic! Over 800 pages long, and a sequel on the period 1933-1939 is promised.

John Robert Ferris. Men, Money, and Diplomacy: The Evolution of British Strategic Foreign Policy, 1919-1926. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. A key reference on a somewhat neglected period.

Boris Ford, ed. The Cambridge Cultural History. Volume 8: Early 20th Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Because I need more culture!

Peter Lewis. The British Bomber since 1914: Sixty-Five Years of Design and Development. London: Putnam, 1980. 3rd edition. Possibly the standard reference book on the subject. Lots of nice pictures too.

Norman Macmillan. The Royal Air Force in the World War. Volume 1: 1919-1940. London: George G. Harrap, 1942. This is partly of interest to me because it's a near-contemporary history of the RAF in the interwar period, and also because of the author: he was Rothermere's choice to head the National League of Airmen in 1935.

Malcolm Smith. British Air Strategy between the Wars. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Another widely-cited work on RAF air strategy before 1939 ... I can never have too many of these!

The Next Five Years: An Essay in Political Agreement. London: Macmillan, 1935. A manifesto in the "what is to be done?" vein. It's mostly about the need for economic planning and so on, but there's also a long section on collective security and how to improve it, including a bit about air disarmament and the need for international control of civil aviation (so that airliners couldn't be converted into bombers) and maybe an international air force too. Not too surprising given some of the people involved: Clifford Allen, Robert Cecil, Gilbert Murray, Arthur Salter, H.G. Wells, Wickham Steed ...

Robert Wohl. The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920-1950. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005. The long awaited (by me, at least) sequel to A Passion for Wings, this looks to be equally wide-ranging and is just as gloriously illustrated. There's a chapter on aerial bombing, though it seems to have little on Britain prior to the Blitz.

Kim Coleman. A History of Chemical Warfare. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Looks to be an up-to-date overview of the, well, what the title says, right up to the current day. There's a decent section on gas bombing and the fear thereof between the wars, which often seems to be neglected.