Had some good luck browsing in secondhand bookshops this week ...

Lee Brimmicombe-Wood. The Burning Blue: The Battle of Britain, 1940. Hanford: GMT Games, 2006. NOT a book, a wargame simulating the "plotting table" war, if you like. Product page. Well-researched, as the support page shows. DOES have Boulton-Paul Defiants, does NOT have Gladiators.

Donald Cowie. An Empire Prepared: A Study of the Defence Potentialities of Greater Britain. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1939. Published for the Right Book Club. About how all the red bits on the map will help Britain if war comes. Introduction by Lord Lloyd, former Governor of Bombay and High Commissioner of Egypt.

Harry Golding, ed. The Wonder Book of Aircraft for Boys and Girls. London: Ward, Lock & Co, 1919. Was I as giddy as a schoolboy when I saw this in a bookshop for only $10? You betcha! Lots of illustrations, though unfortunately some have been cut out (no doubt to grace some long-forgotten school project), including eight by Heath Robinson! Clarification: that was badly phrased -- the Heath Robinson pics weren't the ones that were cut out, luckily.

Robert Graves and Allan Hodge. The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-1939. London: Four Square Books, 1961 [1939]. A classic work of contemporary history, in a groovy new edition for the new generation.

Richard Jefferies. After London or Wild England. London: Duckworth, 1929 [1885]. Only very tangentially relevant to my areas of interest, mainly as an early example of some catastrophe doing for London and dramatically re-ordering English society.

George Rochester. The Despot of the World. London: John Hamilton, 1936. A thrilling (one assumes) novel of the Soviet menace, air combat over Siberia, and how world war was averted. Part of the "Ace" series of books, along with Biggles and others (indeed, there's a big selection of other aviation titles in the catalogue at the back of the book). My copy was given to one Peter Johnston at Xmas 1936, as the Third Prize "for improvement in Pianoforte".

Ann Curthoys and John Docker. Is History Fiction? Sydney: UNSW Press, 2006.Sic. On truth in history; seems to be attempting a third way between, or at least taking the good bits from both postmodernism and empiricism. My glib answer to the question in the title would be, not if you're doing it right! (Which probably tells you where my sympathies lie.)

Philip Eklund. Airships at War 1914-1941. Sierra Madre Games, 2003. Not a book but a wargame, simulating a Zeppelin mission in the First World War or in a hypothetical war between the US and Japan (including the American flying aircraft carriers Macon and Akron). There seems to be a lot of info packed into this game: it even simulates things like onboard sailmakers (for repairing tears in the hydrogen cells), and tossing the wireless overboard in order to gain lift! I'll write a bit more about this game when I have had a chance to play it; for now here's the company's product page for a bit more information. (I'm really annoyed to see that the game listed there now has updated rules and components compared to the one I ordered a whole week ago. They could have at least mentioned the fact that an update was due soon!)

Philip Eklund. Riesenflugzeugabteilungen. Sierra Madre Games, 1997. An expansion for Airships at War which features the giant German, Italian and Russian bombers of WWI. Product page. (Again, a newer edition than the one I've just received ...)

Jay Winter and Antoine Prost. The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Writing (and to a lesser degree, filming) the Great War across time and space (mainly Britain, France and Germany). The structure looks fruitful: it slices the narrative by 'experience' (eg soldiers, workers, civilians).