It’s well known that in the Blitz, London’s Underground stations were used by civilians as ad hoc air raid shelters. Indeed, photos of platforms crowded with huddled people taking cover from the bombs on the surface are iconic and practically the first thing you likely think of when the Blitz is mentioned. (I’m sure you […]
1BoB is The First Battle of Britain: The Air War Over England, 1917–1918 (hereafter 1BoB), which sounds like a book but is actually a wargame. I bought my copy back in April 2009, not long after I submitted my PhD, at which point I noted that ‘I try to avoid buying wargames because I never
When is an mystery aeroplane panic not a mystery aeroplane panic? When it’s a mystery sampan panic, obviously.
The world is a bad place right now, and a lot of that has to do with bombing civilians. And it’s impossible for me to look at the news from Gaza, or from Ukraine, and not think of my own current book project on the bombing of British civilians in the First World War. But
This is the frontispiece illustration from John E. Gurdon, The Sky Trackers (London: Frederick Warne & Co., 1931). Gurdon was an RFC ace (28 victories, all in Brisfits) and after the war took up writing aviation adventure stories so he could discharge a bankruptcy. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, noting that ‘Columbus, setting out in a
‘In the future, every historian will be relevant for 15 minutes’, as somebody once said. Here’s my 15 minutes, an interview with journalist Connor Echols for Responsible Statecraft on the parallels between the 1913 phantom airship panic and the 2023 spy balloon panic. As I’ve been busy with other things and have had to watch
In September 1909, rather late in Invasion‘s run, an article appeared in Pearson’s Weekly explaining not only some of the pyrotechnical mechanics behind the spectacle, but also the underlying airpower theory. Because it was not merely an popular entertainment and a commercial one at that, but a response to the question ‘Invasion by aeroplane, is
While you’re waiting for me to write Home Fires Burning, here are some other books (mostly) on the same topic, whether wholly or in substantial part. This is not meant to be in any way a comprehensive list; it’s merely what I have found to be most useful. I’ve included links to out-of-copyright/open access versions,
Last night I had my first full-on anxiety dream about nuclear war since the 1980s. As ICBM trails arced across the blue sky overhead, I ran for the safety of a nearby shelter — and confirmed that the Third World War had started by getting out my phone to check my social media feeds. Of
So I’m writing a book. Why? There are already many histories of the German air raids on Britain in the First World War: in my proposal, I listed eleven published since the 1980s alone, and even that is hardly exhaustive. Many of these are excellent — Ian Castle’s books, in particular, are required reading on
