J. M. Kenworthy. Peace or War? New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927. I ordered this back in January, before I realised that it’s just Will Civilisation Crash? (London: Ernest Benn, 1927), under a different title. And a different pagination. Oh well. David Zimmerman. Britain’s Shield: Radar and the Defeat of the Luftwaffe. Stroud: Sutton, 2001. […]
A. C. Grayling. Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? London: Bloomsbury, 2006. I haven’t really come to grips with the moral questions surrounding my subject yet (yes, bombing civilians is bad, but then war is generally not very nice, so …), so I’ll be
The Royal Navy is about to pay a high price for its neglect of airpower … Front cover of E. F. Spanner, The Broken Trident (London: E. F. Spanner, 1929). I just like this picture for some reason. Spanner was a retired naval architect who evidently had at least one bee in his bonnet, for
Another bit from the Earl of Halsbury’s 1944 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1926), this time from p. 217. It’s a couple of weeks after a massive Russo-German air strike on London, Paris, and in fact most of the bigger cities of western Europe. Two members of a group making its way to the southern coast of
Sebastian Ritchie. Industry and Air Power: The Expansion of British Aircraft Production, 1935-41. London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1997. Just what it says in the title, really. Not, I think, from the declinist school of British historiography.
David Oliver. Hendon Aerodrome: A History. Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1994. Hendon was probably THE most important site for the cultivation of airmindedness in Britain up to the Second World War — first as the home base of pioneer aviator Claude Grahame-White and friends, then from the 1920s as the location of the annual RAF Pageant, always
I’ve been reading George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Penguin, 1989), which was originally published in 1937. Not because it has anything to do with my thesis, but just to broaden my horizons, and because, well, it’s Orwell, ya know? I certainly didn’t expect to read about the possible effects of bombing in
Andrew Boyle. Trenchard. London: Collins, 1962. Finally got around to buying a copy of the standard biography of a crucial figure in the early RAF. L. E. O. Charlton. Charlton. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938. Charlton’s autobiography, originally published in 1931 — so after his almost-resignation from the RAF over bombing in Iraq, but before he became
Lee Kennett. A History of Strategic Bombing. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982. Looks like a very good short introduction to the subject. Balanced international coverage and the cultural side of things is not neglected.
Robert Graves. Goodbye to All That. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960 [1929]. Another of the classic war books, that I should already have read. David Powell. The Edwardian Crisis: Britain, 1901-1914. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 1996. New books about Edwardian Britain are pretty thin on the ground (over here, anyway) so I got excited when I
