After six weeks in the UK, I finally got to see somewhere other than London when I attended a conference at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire. To get to Cranwell, I took a GNER train from King’s Cross to Newark in Nottinghamshire, where a RAF courtesy bus took me the rest of the 20km or so […]
While trawling through newspapers I keep an eye out for interesting aircraft-related advertisements. These are not uncommon, most obviously in relation to industries which could claim some relationship with aviation (after any record-breaking flight, there was usually at least one ad pointing out how much the triumphant pilot owed to some petroleum product or other).
One week I’m looking out over London’s skyline from the top of St Paul’s, the next I’m exploring underneath its streets, at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. But this post is only about the latter, as no photography is allowed in the Museum. That’s OK: while the museum was most interesting and very
Here’s something a bit different. It’s a paper model aeroplane which I made from a design published on 30 June 1934 in “Boys and Girls”, the weekly children’s supplement to the Daily Mail. The claim is made there that it glides, but sadly all mine does is stall and then enter a tailspin … but
One of the archives I visited during the second half of my time in London was the Archive Collection at the RAF Museum. Sadly the material I turned up, though interesting, was not overall of much relevance for my thesis. So I couldn’t justify spending a second day there. But, on the bright side, the
The above photograph, and all of the following, are from Poison Gas (London: Union of Democratic Control, 1935).
One week after Westminster Abbey, I visited the other great London church, St Paul’s Cathedral. They are very different in form and function. (They are alike in not allowing photography inside, so again I’ve only got exterior shots. I took some more on an earlier excursion.) Westminster Abbey is medieval and gothic. St Paul’s is
I recently had the somewhat guilty pleasure of watching Flood, a film (from a novel) about the sudden devastation of London by a massive storm surge — predicted by a scientist who had long been dismissed as a crank — which swamps the Thames Barrier, submerges most of the city’s landmarks, kills a couple of
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] … to send me submissions for the next Military History Carnival! This will be posted at Airminded on 14 October, one week from today. I have a few suggestions already, but need more. Any posts published in the previous month and which involve military history in some way will be
Probably my favourite place to research in London was the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College London, where I spent the better part of two weeks digging through several personal archives. It’s a very pleasant environment to work in, and the staff were very helpful in accommodating this rude colonial’s requests, even
