Shirley Jacobs writes to inform me that the W E Johns Appreciation Society now has a website. It’s clearly quite an active group — there’s a magazine, Biggles Flies Again, published twice a year, and regular meetings with the next in Derby on 24 October. Via the site, one can keep up with W. E. […]
William le Queux‘s The Invasion of 1910 is today one of the best-remembered of the Edwardian invasion novels (at least to anyone interested in the topic). Not because of any literary value — very few people read it today, and I can’t blame them — but because of its contemporary success. It was commissioned by
I bought these the other day, about 17000 km away — except for one which was a gift. The Battle of Britain: An Air Ministry Account of the Great Days from 8th August — 31st October 1940. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1941. Thanks, Simon! Angus Calder. The People’s War: Britain 1939-1945. London: Pimlico, 1992
Jonathan Foster. The Death Ray: The Secret Life of Harry Grindell Matthews. Inventive Publishing, 2009. As seen here. Another find in a Welsh museum bookshop — I should go to Wales more often!
Peter London. U-Boat Hunters: Cornwall’s Air War, 1916-19. Truro: Dyllansow Truran, 1999. RNAS airship and aeroplane anti-submarine operations: some success under pretty trying conditions. Richard Overy. 1939: Countdown to War. London: Allen Lane, 2009. I’ve now met the author! Robert Stradling. Your Children Will Be Next: Bombing and Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939.
I’m flying out today for London, and from there to Exeter, Truro, Cardiff, Conwy, Leicester and then London again. I’ll probably have internet access most of the time but blog updates will no doubt become more irregular. I hope to meet some of my readers while in Blighty, especially those who have promised me pints!
I recently attended a function in the Gryphon Gallery of the 1888 Building at the University of Melbourne, where there’s a local war memorial I missed out on when I last wrote on the topic. It was dedicated in 1920 in what was then the Teachers’ College, and takes the form of three stained glass
It’s seventy years today since Britain and France declared war on Germany. At 11.15am on Sunday 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke to the nation via the BBC. At 11.28am, less than a quarter of an hour later, air raid sirens went off in London and (at differing times) across much of the
While walking home tonight I saw something unexpected.
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] A couple of interesting posts at The Russian Front suggest that the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 should be thought of as a World War Zero, or alternatively that the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 should be. It’s often useful to play around with the names we give to historical events and phenomena, because
