A couple of months ago, Alun Salt did a very nice thing for me: he unexpectedly assembled some of the posts I’ve written here about phantom airships into an e-book. Using that as the basis, I’ve had a go at learning how to do e-books myself. (Alun recommended using Jutoh, an e-book project manager, and
The Twenty-Fifth Hour (1940), by Herbert Best (better known as the author of the ‘Desmond the dog detective’ books, though not by much), may well be the last knock-out blow novel, the last novel where (conventional) bombers play the decisive part in a war. In this war, indeed, they are too decisive, knocking away the
Michael Kerrigan. World War II Plans That Never Happened, 1939-1945. London: Amber Books, 2011. As a historian, I’m probably not supposed to like counterfactuals. There are very good reasons for this. It’s hard enough to reconstruct what did happen without worrying about what didn’t. There are no minutes from meetings which never took place, no
Rather more seaminded than airminded, the result of having visited two maritime museums today. Mike Dash. Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny. London: Phoenix, 2003. See here. Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen. The Wolf. North Sydney: William Heinemann, 2009. See here. M. McCarthy, ed. HMAS Sydney (II).
Since my AAEH talk is in four days, I’d better start actually putting the pieces I’ve scattered over this blog together into something (ideally) coherent which can be presented in 20 minutes (with 10 for questions). So here’s a stab at a plan: First thing is to explain what I’m talking about: the public debate
Picked these up at the closing-down sale of a very good bookshop (so not Borders, obviously). Terry Charman. Outbreak 1939: The World Goes to War. London: Virgin Books, 2009. I very distinctly remember not going to the IWM exhibition this accompanied when I was last in London. An almost minute-by-minute account of 3 September 1939,
Let’s tackle the question of public opinion head on. Did the British people want reprisal bombing to be carried out against the German people? How can we tell? Can we even tell? If we wanted to gauge public opinion on a particular question today, we’d carry out an opinion poll. As luck would have it,
Martin van Creveld. The Age of Airpower. New York: PublicAffairs, 2011. A history of airpower for the 21st century — there’s about twice as much space devoted to small wars and counterinsurgency as there is to the Second World War. Presentism or rebalancing? Barrett Tillman. Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945. New York: Simon
Herbert Best. The Twenty-fifth Hour. London: Jonathan Cape, 1940. This must have been about the last flowering of that forgotten genre, the knock-out blow novel. More than that, it’s an example of the exceptionally rare post-apocalyptic sub-genre, as it is set years after the end of civilisation and portrays the grim struggle for survival among
This post should probably be called ‘Smugglers?’ but like many people I owe an intellectual debt to Enid Blyton. I’ve seen mentions of mystery aircraft in Britain in the 1930s but until now never a primary source reference. Thomas Bullard’s most interesting The Myth and Mystery of UFOs notes that ‘Mystery airplanes also appeared at
