On 22 August 1849, the Republic of San Marco surrendered to Austria. The Republic was formed after a revolt in Venice against Austrian rule in March 1848. The Austrians eventually besieged Venice, leading to starvation and outbreaks of cholera in the city. During this siege, they launched the first air raids in history, by unmanned […]
On this day in 1945, the third atomic bomb was dropped on Tokyo. Or, rather, might have been had not Japan surrendered on 15 August. For a long time, I’ve believed that the two bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only ones which would be available for a month or two. But a
The fire at Penyberth, in the Llŷn peninsula, is an important part of the history of the Welsh nationalist movement. In the early hours of 8 September 1936, three men, Saunders Lewis, Lewis Valentine and D. J. Williams, entered an aerodrome which was being built for the RAF as a bombing school and deliberately set
One quite inadequate response to the paywalling of bibliographies is to set up your own, which I’ve made a start at here. It’s a little narrower in focus than the RHS bibliography, being limited to works relating to the history of British aviation up to 1941 which I looked at in the course of my
Peter Neville. Hitler and Appeasement: The British Attempt to Prevent the Second World War. London and New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006. Takes the pro-appeasement side of the argument. Particularly good on diplomacy and personalities.
At In the Middle, Karl Steel reviews Adriana Cavarero’s book Horrorism, which, as I understand it, seeks to reorient descriptions of violence from the perspective of its perpetrators to that of its victims. This part of the review seems like a good question to ask here: I suffer an even pettier annoyance when she writes:
Pierre-Antoine Courouble. The Riddle of the Wooden Bombs. Toulon: Les Presses du Midi, 2009. One of my early posts on this blog was about a story which goes something like the following. The Germans are constructing a fake airfield to decoy Allied bombers, with dummy aircraft made out of wood. On the day it is
Pierre-Antoine Courouble. The Riddle of the Wooden Bombs. Toulon: Les Presses du Midi, 2009. A remarkably thorough attempt to run the wooden bomb stories to ground. Note: review copy.
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] Or, Australia strides onto the world stage. Today is the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Versailles Treaty and thus of the Covenant of the League of Nations (which formed the first thirty articles of the Treaty). This was a fateful moment, with heavy consequences for those who lived through the
Sarah Caro. How to Publish Your PhD. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Might come in handy one day. P. D. Smith. Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon. London: Penguin, 2008. Nice to see I’m not the only one with such dreams. NB: the author has a blog which often contains
