Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, speech to the Lord Mayor’s banquet, 9 November 1897: Remember this — that the federation of Europe is the only possible structure of Europe which can save civilisation from the desolating effects of a disastrous war. You notice that on all sides the instruments of destruction, the piling up of arms […]
Rome, beautiful Rome! Is there anything I can say about the Eternal City that hasn’t been said before? No, but I won’t let that stop me trying. It was fantastic both in the sense of great and in the sense of unbelievable — it’s almost hard to believe I really was there. But I have
A curious snippet from Margaret MacMillan’s account of the Paris Peace Conference, Peacemakers (2002): Why not give it to Hughes of Australia, suggested Clemenceau.1 The ‘it’ was Heligoland, a small island in the North Sea, off the north-western coast of Germany. For most of the 19th century it had belonged to Britain, which swapped it
“Slough” by John Betjeman (1937): Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now, There isn’t grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death! Come, bombs and blow to smithereens Those air-conditioned, bright canteens, Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, Tinned minds, tinned breath. Mess up the mess they
In 1923, the Salisbury Committee enquired into the proper relationship between the RAF, on the one hand, and the Army and Navy, on the other. According to Andrew Boyle’s biography of Hugh Trenchard, the then Chief of the Air Staff quoted a recent statement by Sir Ian Hamilton (the commander at Gallipoli) at some point
My second (and last) day in Edinburgh was unfortunately pretty much overcast the whole day, so my pictures are a bit dull. But as I spent most of the time indoors, this didn’t matter too much. (Above, Edinburgh Castle from the Princes Street Gardens.)
I’ve finally gotten around to adding Montagu of Beaulieu (pronounced ‘Bewley’, apparently) to my irregular series of biographies of airpower propagandists. He’s an important, but somewhat neglected figure, some of whose papers I’ve examined (those held at King’s College London). He helped found the Air League of the British Empire in 1909, and devised the
Carl von Clausewitz. On War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989 [1832]. Probably something anybody with pretensions to being a military historian should have to hand, even if other strategists have been more influential in different contexts, places and times. (I recently came across Trenchard speaking of Edward Hamley in the same breath as Clausewitz and
The 11th Military History Carnival has been posted at Battlefield Biker. My pick this month is Siberian Light’s post on the Battle of Khalkin-Gol (better known, to me at least, as the Nomonhan Incident), a big tank battle fought between the USSR and Japan in August 1939. I didn’t know that it actually began as
After wandering around Edinburgh Castle, I thought: castles are really cool! I wanted to see more, and since I probably should be a confident user of the British transport system by now, I decided that I’d do a day trip out somewhere to see one. A bit of googling led me to Stirling Castle, a
