Peter Neville. Hitler and Appeasement: The British Attempt to Prevent the Second World War. London and New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006. Takes the pro-appeasement side of the argument. Particularly good on diplomacy and personalities.
At In the Middle, Karl Steel reviews Adriana Cavarero’s book Horrorism, which, as I understand it, seeks to reorient descriptions of violence from the perspective of its perpetrators to that of its victims. This part of the review seems like a good question to ask here: I suffer an even pettier annoyance when she writes:
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] ‘Harvard by the Yarra’ is actually the University of Melbourne, Australia (the Yarra being the major river hereabouts, though the university is not actually anywhere near it). Some wag coined the phrase to describe (and deride) the aspirations implicit in the Melbourne Model, a radical overhaul of undergraduate teaching announced in 2007.
The first bombers didn’t fly but sailed: they were warships known as bomb vessels, which mounted heavy mortars firing explosive shells. These could be used in naval battles, but weren’t very accurate and so were usually used to attack targets on land, including cities. The French navy used bomb vessels to bombard Genoa in 1684,
It’s a hundred years today since Louis Blériot became the first person to fly an aeroplane across the English Channel. (He wasn’t the first person, period; Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries together crossed it by balloon in 1785.) As x planes has already post-blogged the flight itself, I’ll focus on one reaction to the flight,
Pierre-Antoine Courouble. The Riddle of the Wooden Bombs. Toulon: Les Presses du Midi, 2009. One of my early posts on this blog was about a story which goes something like the following. The Germans are constructing a fake airfield to decoy Allied bombers, with dummy aircraft made out of wood. On the day it is
When did people wearing monocles stop being taken seriously in public life? Noel Pemberton Billing, independent candidate for Hertford, in 1916. From N. Pemberton-Billing, Air War: How to Wage It (London: Gale & Polden, 1916).
Perhaps the first mass outbreak of mystery aircraft sightings took place in 1892 in Russian-occupied Poland, near the German border. The Manchester Guardian reported on 26 March that a ‘large balloon coming from the German frontier appeared about the fortress of Kovno‘. The Russian defenders fired at it, but it returned safely over the border.1
Pierre-Antoine Courouble. The Riddle of the Wooden Bombs. Toulon: Les Presses du Midi, 2009. A remarkably thorough attempt to run the wooden bomb stories to ground. Note: review copy.
Chris Williams (AKA Chris A. Williams) has put online a recording of a lecture he gave last year about the evolution of the police C3I system, by way of train control and air defence. (See also here.) More like this, please!
