One of the worst incidents of the German air raids on Britain in the First World War was a stampede at the Bishopsgate Goods Yard, Shoreditch, on 28 January 1918, in which fourteen people were killed. This has been almost entirely forgotten by the internet: while there are a number of detailed historical discussions available […]
I’m featured in the latest episode of the podcast Tales from Rat City, which is focused on unusual and sometimes bizarre aspects of the history of Ballarat, Victoria’s third largest city (if you’ve heard of the Eureka Stockade, well, that’s where that was). It’s run by David Waldron (a historian at Federation University who co-authored
A little while ago I was privileged to be part of a discussion on the Stories from the Space Between podcast with Rinni Haji Amran and Luke Seaber, and hosted by Michael McCluskey, on the idea of, yes, airmindedness. Michael and Luke edited Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain, to which Rinni
I’m a bit of a podcast sceptic, meaning not that I don’t believe in their existence but rather that I don’t really get the appeal (which probably puts me in a similar position to a blog sceptic about 15 years ago). Since they aren’t actually going away any time soon, I guess it was bound
People are nice. At the AHA today, I bumped into Bart Ziino, who gave me a present: the sheet music for a 1939 ballad called ‘Lords Of The Air’. I’d not heard of it before, though I’ve probably heard it before as it was played in several episodes of Dad’s Army. You can listen to
The May 2015 issue of Fortean Times (a periodical I warmly recommend) has a fascinating article by Daniel Wilson about a type of radio interference known as oscillation, which afflicted radio broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s, about which, I’m ashamed to say, I previously knew nothing at all.1 What’s fascinating about oscillation is not
For my third Turning Points talk for ABC New England radio, I chose a topic I ought to know something about: the Battle of Britain! In some ways it’s an obvious choice, and not only for the obvious reason; there are few years in history as dramatic as 1940, and Hitler’s conquest of Britain has
I did my second Turning Point for ABC New England radio today, and chose to talk about the founding the League of Nations in 1920. The League is usually considered to be a failure, because it didn’t prevent the Second World War or even play any significant role after the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. But
After taking some time to recover after the marathon Road to War, I’m taking part in a new series of talks with ABC New England North West‘s Kelly Fuller, along with fellow members of the UNE School of Humanities Nathan Wise (who came up with the concept), Sarah Lawrence and Richard Scully (and more, if
A common complaint1 about this blog is that it doesn’t feature nearly enough pictures of airships. So here’s one, a 27-metre long non-rigid which belonged to Henry Spencer, scion of a remarkably airminded family (sixteen aeronauts across four generations). Indeed, he built it with his brothers. The photograph was taken on 16 February 1909 and
