[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] It’s 50 years since Sputnik I lifted off. Although I was airminded as a kid, I was much more spaceminded. So 1957 was always a crucial year in my understanding of history back then: it was where the modern age began. (In fact the very first historical work I ever […]
Probably my favourite place to research in London was the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College London, where I spent the better part of two weeks digging through several personal archives. It’s a very pleasant environment to work in, and the staff were very helpful in accommodating this rude colonial’s requests, even
One of the benefits of living in London for two months is the way it helped me to understand its geography. So when I read, for example, that 500 men, women and children walked from Greenwich to Trafalgar Square on 22 July 1917 to demand ‘improved air defences for London and the adoption of a
WHAT AUSTRALIA WOULD BE LIKE UNDER HUN RULE. — An original recruiting poster which was used with great success in South Australia. Tasmania, it will be noted, becomes Kaisermania, and the idols of the Huns have provided other place-names. This is from the Daily Mail, 3 July 1917, p. 8, and would appear to be
OK, it’s time to start catching up on my backlog of travel posts! The day after visiting Westminster Abbey, as it was a nice day I decided I’d go to Hampton Court Palace. Unfortunately it was too nice and I was sweating like a pig while standing in line at the ticket office at Waterloo,
I’ve just spent two months at various libraries and archives in the UK. As I’ve noted previously, I now have a huge amount of extra primary source material to go through. Sure, in the abstract, more is better, but in concrete terms, how will this help make my thesis better than it would otherwise have
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Six months ago, I used Cliopatria’s list of history blogs to assess the state of the military portion of the historioblogosphere. My original plan was to do this every year, but because things move fast online I’ll update it every six months instead. I won’t waffle on too much about
I ordered these months before I left for London; of course they only turned up a couple of weeks after I left! Basil Collier. The Defence of the United Kingdom. Uckfield: Naval and Military Press, 2004 [1957]. The volume of the official British history of the Second World War dealing primarily with air defence, but
Military History Carnival #6 is up at Armchair General. The stand-out post this month is a rebuttal of the alleged decline in military history at American universities, undertaken by David Stone at The Russian Front (which is an ambitious — and very stylish! — new group blog on Russian military and diplomatic history, the editor-in-chief
Songs of Australia: the landscape, the country and the city. Icehouse, “Great Southern Land”. Standing at the limit of an endless ocean Stranded like a runaway, lost at sea City on a rainy day down in the harbour Watching as the grey clouds shadow the bay
