Peter J. Bowler. A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. An excellent survey of the way that the future was imagined in the public sphere, mostly in Britain and mostly in the first half of the 20th century. The title […]
@TroveAirBot is a Twitter bot which tweets links to random articles about aviation from Trove Newspapers. In its first day or so of operation, it has tweeted about…
A snippet from David Hall’s Worktown, on the Mass-Observation project in Bolton, a textile town near Manchester: At 2.40 [pm] the most interesting event of the day took place. Eight aeroplanes flew over — a rare sight in Worktown, which is nowhere near a military airport and some distance from a civil one. ‘Two men
The State Library of Queensland identifies this image as ‘R.A.A.F. Mosquito bombers, ca. 1945′; I suspect it’s from a RAAF march and flypast put on for the Third Victory Loan in the centre of Brisbane on 6 April 1945. On that occasion, according to the Courier-Mail, The veteran Lancaster bomber ‘G. for George,’ will lead
Jon Cooksey. The Vest Pocket Kodak & The First World War. Lewes: Ammonite Press, 2017. A small book on an interesting topic. The utility and portability of the Vest Pocket Kodak camera made it incredibly popular with soldiers in the front lines and behind them, mostly British here (though the French and Germans are not
Things have been a bit quiet here lately, which I hope will change soon. But I haven’t been entirely inactive in blogging terms: I’ve written a guest post on the construction of authority in early British aviation for the German Historical Institute’s History of Knowledge blog. The history of knowledge is a newish historiographical endeavour,
I’m very pleased to announce that I have been awarded an Australian Bicentennial Fellowship by the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King’s College London. This is a travel grant which I will use to come to the UK to continue research for my next book, a history of Britain under the German air raids
Paul Gooding. Historic Newspapers in the Digital Age: ‘Search All About It!’ London and New York: Routledge, 2017. I was hoping for more of a practical guide to the many methodological issues involving the use of digitised newspapers than this provides; it’s much more about the theoretical issues surrounding digitisation and how that connects (or
Above is a pair of stereo photos kindly sent to me by Tim Lees, who found them in his father’s collection. There’s a slight mystery as to the occasion. The label at the top reads ‘Hendon – July ’28’, which suggests they were taken at the RAF Display at Hendon in 1928, but that year
C. D. Coulthard-Clark. The Third Brother: The Royal Australian Air Force 1921-39. North Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991. The classic history of the early RAAF (not that there is much serious competition). People, policies, institutions, infrastructure — it’s all here, even air displays! Richard P. Hallion. Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air
