…se it can be explained entirely through probability theory. Having previously argued that memes a) don’t exist and b) are a waste of time, I have to admit that this is a really good one. Brett Holman As long as you can pass the Turing Test, I don’t care how you do it! Investigations of a Dog » To go off and things […] And Brett at Airminded has tagged me for a meme… […] Chris’s monkeys “Fairly narrow”? 1908 to 1941 seems like a lifetime’s wo…
…photo on the Mail page would appear to be the game in question (it’s clearly wrongly captioned). The Nazi leaders as targets are Hitler, Goering, von Ribbentrop, Goebbels, Himmler, von Papen and von Rundstedt. The last two are a bit odd: von Papen surely was not particularly influential during the war (he was ambassador to Turkey, 1939-44); von Rundstedt was of course one of the highest-ranking army officers, not a Nazi leader as such. But there…
…ll my time sightseeing, but (in case my supervisor is reading this!) actually that was only one or two days a week. Apart from attending two conferences, giving one presentation, and meeting with a number of aviation historians, the rest of the week was usually spent in some archive or library, including: British Library (newspapers, books and manuscripts) Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London Department of Documents, Im…
…post here. I would seem that the niche of military history, and particularly aviation, has barely been exploited yet in the blogosphere. Part of the issue may be that many interesting sites have been made i pre-blog times by people which were less technically aware who preferred to produce their publications as journals or reference websites. Two examples of this may be (now sadly defunct) Chandelle or (likewise defunct) AFV Interiors. In other w…
…ion of London, which was in existence in 1914, and which was whittled away bit by bit until the last fragment dropped into the sea in the early spring of 1916. Sir Austen Chamberlain (Foreign Secretary in Baldwin’s second government) here interjected to say that ‘It was never ratified.’ No, but we regarded it as binding. Let me also remind the House what I reminded them of before — of two things in the last War. We all remember the cry that was ra…
…, bureaucrats and servants was staggering. It looked and smelled good … sadly, we were only allowed to look! I can’t remember what this room is. It’s obviously been restored to reflect some function from the Tudor period — the kitchen accountant, perhaps? I had no problems navigating the famous maze, being a dedicated follower of walls. But I took a wrong turn when trying to find the entrance to the gardens, so didn’t get to see them before closin…
…he others. If I remember correctly players are required to go to a diagonally opposite corner. The adults at the time were rather bemused how a game showing a ‘map’ of London could possibly be allowed when security was so important? Brett Holman Thanks very much for this, Denis! Interesting to see which of my guesses were right and which were wrong. The worries about security sound familiar, but it seems unlikely that there was any information on…
…valry helmet, found at the fort at Newstead (Roman Trimontium, which was only briefly occupied around 80 and then again during the period of the Antonine Wall, 140-80). It wouldn’t have been used in warfare, but in tournaments or displays. Another piece of Pictish art, 10th century from Bullion. The caption suggests that it’s a caricature of a drunken lord; the catalogue description just says that he’s drinking. Is the catalogue too conservative o…
…thing to see here … … move along … … move along. Finally, we come to the only bit that anybody ever looks at, the top 5 military history blogs by Technorati rank. And here there has in fact been quite a bit of movement. Two of the top 5 are new to the list, and there is also a new number 1. That’s Civil War Memory, which has been threatening to become the most popular military history blog ever since I started doing these posts. Second is one of t…
…ure where that figure of 30′ came from! Looking at it again, the roof is only 13.5′ (7 feet of earth, 6.5 of — presumably — reinforced concrete) thick. Below that is the entrance level, which is 8.5′ high. I was assuming that would be empty (not sure why, actually) but still that offers no extra protection. And then after that the floor of the ramp is only 0.5′ thick, which seems very thin indeed! Still, the roof was layered (earth, concrete, ea…
