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
David Edgerton wrote in to let me know that he has made his 1991 book England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation available online as a resource for students and scholars (though it may go back into print at some stage). It can be found through his publications page, or
