[Update: due to my misunderstanding of a key word, this post is fundamentally misconceived. Exercise due caution!] Hello everybody, I seem to have got here at last, it’s been a long long time but here I am and jolly glad I am to be here at last. I bring [inaudible] from the people of England […]
Hamish Blair. 1957. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1930. Something a bit different — an air control novel, instead of a knock-out blow one; India ablaze instead of London. As the dust-jacket ominously says, ‘1857: Indian Mutiny. 1957: ?’ Luckily 1947 came first. John Ramsden. Don’t Mention the War: The British and the
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Fw 198. Image source: Current Aviation, 26 November 1943, via Model Airplane Kits. In the course of my research, I get to read many predictions about the future, partiularly the future of warfare. One of the reasons I like doing this is that it helps to restore the uncertainty of
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] This is the front cover of a book by J. M. Spaight on British airpower, called The Sky’s the Limit. It was published in 1940, a not-insignificant year for the RAF. In fact, this ‘New and up-to-date’ edition was published in August, right in the middle of the Battle of
Andy leaps to the defence of Sir Leo Chiozza Money with an erudite, witty and cogent comment. For the record, however, I do not wear sandels or even sandals. Make of that what you will. Esther attracts a higher class of clientele, but still, it’s a start!
I’m preparing for my PhD confirmation, which means I’m nearly a year in. (Eeep!) This means giving a paper (done), writing a report justifying what I’ve done and plan to do, and appearing before a committee to discuss my report and progress. A cynical viewpoint would be that this is just a hoop-jumping-through exercise which
I’ve put up a biographical note on the jurist and civil servant J. M. Spaight, an important commentator on airpower issues from before the First World War until after the Second. I should have put this up long ago (Airminded gets quite a few search engine referrals from queries relating to Spaight, and there’s not
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] … I’m a bad historian! No, well, actually, I have a post included in the latest Carnival of Bad History, which may or may not mean the same thing. Head on over to Hiram Hover’s place and decide for yourself — and while you’re there, make sure you sample the
Antony Beevor. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006. The Spanish Civil War was a crucial event in British airpower history. I have the first edition of this book, but I haven’t read it yet, so … Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan and Robert Savage, eds. Imagining the Future:
Just as reading Orwell serendipitously led me to a reference to the next war in the air, so too has reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Here, Mustapha Mond, one of the Controllers of the world state, gives an impromptu history lesson (I’ve cut out unrelated, interleaved dialogue from another strand of the plot): ‘The
