Words

Plots and tables, Thesis, Tools and methods, Words

Clouds

Partly in lieu of the thing itself, but mainly just for fun, here are some word clouds of my thesis (generated with Wordle). So the above image shows the 75 most frequent words in the entire document, with the biggest word being the most common. (So it’s something to do with air and war and […]

1910s, Periodicals, Words

Cabbage crates coming over the briny?

Some perfectly ordinary banter, c. 1917: First “Hun”: “Did you see old Cole’s zoom on a quirk this morning?” Second “Hun”: “No, what happened?” First “Hun”: “Oh, nothing to write home about … stalled his ‘bus and pancaked thirty feet … crashed completely … put a vertical gust up me … just as I was

1910s, Air defence, Books, Maps, Pictures, Words

Two barrages

One of the things I love about the official history of the RFC and RAF in the First World War is all the maps — multi-panel fold-out jobs showing where bombs fell in London during the Gotha raids, or the Allied front in Macedonia. That’s not to mention the accompanying slip-cases stuffed full of more

1930s, Polls, Words

Name that crisis!

Here’s a question of terminology which has been bugging me for some time. The Munich crisis in September and October 1938 is a well-known historical event. But the name ‘Munich crisis’ is misleading, because the crisis was building long before the word Munich was ever associated with it. Munich had nothing to do with the

1920s, Periodicals, Words

The interwar internet

Sometimes I wonder how I’d react if I was perusing an early-twentieth century newspaper and came across a URL in an advertisement. Maybe http://www.aerialgymnkhana.co.uk or http://www.hobadl.org.uk. I mean, there’s no physical reason why this couldn’t happen — all those characters existed back then. It’s just that arranging them in such a way would have made

1930s, 1940s, Civil defence, Periodicals, Words

War of words

The other day I came across a fascinating article by H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore. Mencken was very interested in colloquial English, and to this end penned “War words in England”, published in the February 1944 American Speech, about new words coming into use in the British press as a result of the

1930s, 1940s, Periodicals, Words

From blitzkrieg to blitz

[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] The German bombing of London and other British cities between September 1940 and May 1941 is referred to as “the Blitz”, a contemporary term which, if not actually coined by the press, was certainly popularised by it. Blitz is short for blitzkrieg, German for “lightning war”, which was the label

Scroll to Top