In 1935, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, tried to buy the Airspeed Viceroy, an aeroplane which had been built to order for the London-Melbourne air race the year before. The Viceroy (above) was a one-off, customised version of Airspeed’s successful Envoy, a twin-engined civil transport which could carry six passengers in addition to its […]
Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter, eds. A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010. A diverse collection of articles: strategy, historiography, oral history, operational history. Of particular interest is a contribution by John Ferris on British perceptions of Japanese airpower (includes Darth Vader bonus quote). A. L. Goodhart. What Acts
Today’s big story must have caused quite a bit of consternation to readers: it’s scarcely possible to credit it. Here is the full text of the statement issued by 10, Downing Street last night (as reproduced in The Times, 5):
Gerald Dickens. Bombing and Strategy: The Fallacy of Total War. London: Sampson Low, Marston, n.d. [1946?]. That’s Admiral Sir Gerald Dickens KCVO CB CMG to you and me, the grandson of Charles Dickens no less. An example of airpower scepticism. I had hoped that it was the 1941 edition, but the ‘n.d.’ turns out to
A recent post at Ptak Science Books alerted me to the existence of page 363 of the Illustrated London News for 6 September 1913. Not that I was surprised by this in general terms, but I was unaware of what was on it: an artist’s impression of a both a flying aircraft carrier — which
Keith Kyle. Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011 [1993]. Suez was not the first time Britain ‘intervened’ in the Middle East, nor the last; but it was arguably the most disastrously misconceived intervention. A classic (and weighty) account.
I don’t usually do pathos for the sake of pathos, but while reading Juliet Gardiner’s The Blitz: The British Under Attack (London: Harper Press, 2010), 316, I came across an account of loss which I’ve read before, and which I still find as moving as I did the first time. The speaker is an elderly
Der Spiegel has a lengthy article based upon a new book by historians Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer called Soldaten (no English version yet, unfortunately). It’s based on the transcripts of secret recordings made of the conversations of German POWs captured by British and American forces in the Second World War. They would have talked
Chaz Bowyer. RAF Operations 1918-1938. London: William Kimber, 1988. There were more than you might think — enough to fill a 300-page book, anyway — mostly in the Middle East and on the North-West Front. Very well-illustrated (if you like aeroplanes, that is). Richard Knott. Flying Boats of the Empire: The Rise and Fall of
TRAVELLING OF THE FUTURE: THE BRITISH AERIAL TERMINUS OF THE WHITE MOON LINE — The old order is passing. Already glimpses of the future of aerial transport, with all its mighty possibilities, are becoming visible. When the stricken nations return to a state of prosperity, great things are in store. As to what economic and
