Before 1900, Books, Periodicals
The first air bomb: Venice, 15 July 1849
On 22 August 1849, the Republic of San Marco surrendered to Austria. The Republic was formed after a revolt in Venice against Austrian rule in March 1848. The Austrians eventually besieged Venice, leading to starvation and outbreaks of cholera in the city. During this siege, they launched the first air raids in history, by unmanned
1940s, Books, Counterfactuals, Nuclear, biological, chemical
The third atomic bomb: Tokyo, 19 August 1945
On this day in 1945, the third atomic bomb was dropped on Tokyo. Or, rather, might have been had not Japan surrendered on 15 August. For a long time, I’ve believed that the two bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only ones which would be available for a month or two. But a
1930s, Books, Periodicals
The fire in Llŷn
The fire at Penyberth, in the Llŷn peninsula, is an important part of the history of the Welsh nationalist movement. In the early hours of 8 September 1936, three men, Saunders Lewis, Lewis Valentine and D. J. Williams, entered an aerodrome which was being built for the RAF as a bombing school and deliberately set
Blogging, tweeting and podcasting
I, twit
Twitter is the most jumped-upon bandwagon on the net right now. And so I’ve jumped on too. You can follow me there or by way of the sidebar.
Travel 2009
Things to see in London, late September 2009
A mix of things I missed and things which weren’t there last time: The Guernica tapestry at the Whitechapel Gallery. Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler at the British Museum. Outbreak 1939 at the Imperial War Museum. As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe. IWM Duxford. HMS Belfast. Museum in Docklands. Victoria and Albert Museum. Tower of London.
Books, Periodicals, Tools and methods
Airpower: a bibliography of British aviation history
One quite inadequate response to the paywalling of bibliographies is to set up your own, which I’ve made a start at here. It’s a little narrower in focus than the RHS bibliography, being limited to works relating to the history of British aviation up to 1941 which I looked at in the course of my
Acquisitions, Books
Acquisitions
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.
1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, Air control, Books
Representing horrorism
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:
Academia, Australia, Contemporary
A dispatch from Harvard by the Yarra
[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.