Gazza speaks!
Gazza of The Millwall History Files has weighed in on last year’s post discussing his claim that a famous photo from the Blitz is a propaganda fake. Check it out!
Blogging, tweeting and podcasting
Acquisitions, Books
Acquisitions
Adrian Gilbert. POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe, 1939-1945. London: John Murray, 2006. Due to recent findings, a subject I’d like to know more about. (Over and above the thorough grounding I’ve received from watching The Great Escape, Hogan’s Heroes, etc.) Not to be confused with the celebrated author of The Mayan Prophecies and The Cosmic
1930s, Aircraft, Art, Civil aviation, Ephemera, Periodicals, Pictures, Plots and tables
The greatest air service in the world
A follow-on of sorts to a recent post. Imperial Airways was Britain’s main international airline between 1924 and 1939. It enjoyed semi-official status, as it was subsidised by the British government, and had the contract to deliver air mail throughout the Empire. Another international airline was formed in 1935, British Airways,1 which serviced European routes
Contemporary
Library of the absurd
Via Philobiblon comes word that the British Library is facing steep budget cuts, and may have to start charging scholars for access, and/or close its fabled newspaper collection at Colindale, among other measures. See here and here. As I’m not a British tax-payer, I don’t really have the right to complain, but it would be
1910s, 1930s, 1940s, Australia, Family history
Sons of empire
This week, I was looking at the service records of some other family members who served in the world wars — those that have been digitised anyway — and as today is ‘Straya Day,1 it seems appropriate to write a little about them. Tags: bonza; strewth; grouse; sorry, ocker, the Fokker’s chocker. [↩]
Acquisitions, Books
Acquisitions
Frank Furedi. Culture of Fear Revisited. London and New York: Continuum, 2006. 4th edition. The sociology of fear, including that of terrorism. A well-timed chance discovery for me, as my current chapter is about fear, and the mass media’s role in propagating (and amplifying, if not creating) it.
Blogging, tweeting and podcasting, Polls
Advice to young (well, mid-PhD) writers
Jack McGowan of Smashing the Window has some very interesting reflections on his experiences in seeing his first paper through to being accepted for publication (congrats!). A timely read for me, as I start to think about doing this myself. While I’m on the matter of writing advice, here’s a chance to use the WordPress
After 1950, Cold War, Contemporary, Nuclear, biological, chemical, Pictures, Plots and tables
Five to
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] [Image removed at the request of the copyright holder.] The minute hand of the famous Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just moved closer to apocalypse: it is now set at five minutes to midnight. This is the most dangerous level it has been since 1988.
Biographies
H. G. Wells
I’ve put up a biographical blurb about H. G. Wells, celebrated author of Select Conversations with an Uncle and Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island. Wells is almost the Alpha and the Omega of my thesis, and perhaps the Kappa too — at least in chronological terms: he wrote the first major novel in English on
Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Thesis
A thesis update
I haven’t written for a while on where I’m up to in terms of the PhD thesis (you know — the reason why, ultimately, this blog exists!) I’m nearly at the (nominal) half-way point, and I think it’s coming along ok. Last month I finally completed a draft of chapter 2 (the evolution of the