This seems to be a snippet from a documentary made in New Zealand.1 The main point of it is to show a Camel and a Spitfire flying side by side, but I found the first half more interesting, about the practical aspects of flying a First World War-vintage aeroplane. For example, I hadn’t realised that […]
H. G. Wells. The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind. London: Macmillan and Co., 1914. The novel that unleashed atomic warfare upon the world. I actually already have a copy but it’s a modern edition, and I’d prefer to reference an original edition, where possible. Besides which, the University of Nebraska Press inexplicably changed
I’ve recently read a trilogy of novels about the next war, by Sydney Fowler Wright, a prolific but largely forgotten poet and novelist: Prelude in Prague (London: Newnes, 1935), Four Days War (London: Robert Hale, 1936), and Megiddo’s Ridge (London: Robert Hale, 1937). Only the first is a true knock-out blow novel: in 1938, after
The War Room reports the short list of names for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Black Mamba Cyclone Lightning II Piasa Reaper Spitfire II As noted at the War Room, most of these names are really, really bad, and sound like something a 12 year old boy would come up with.1 Of interest here is
[I posted this last Wednesday, but somehow, it was marked as “private” rather than “published”, so nobody saw it but me! So I’m fixing that and bumping it to the top.] The talk went off pretty well, I think — at least I didn’t hear any snoring and got some good questions at the end.
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Recently, I read a book review which has left me scratching my head. It’s by Trevor Wilson (English Historical Review, 71 (2006), 629-31) and is about, among other books, K. W. Mitchinson, Defending Albion: Britain’s Home Army, 1908-1919 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) — according to the publisher, ‘the first published
The next History Carnival is going up on 1 June at Aqueduct, so don’t forget to send in your nominations, either directly to amy AT amystevensonline DOT com or via the form.
I was extremely flattered to be asked, along with a number of very fine history bloggers, by Cliopatria’s Ralph Luker to participate in a new group blog at the History News Network. We’ve called it Revise and Dissent and it’s been up and running for nearly a week now! Unfortunately, its launch has coincided with
I’m giving a talk next Wednesday as part of the History Department’s Work In Progress Day, and that’s the title I would have given it, had I been the least bit imaginative the day I wrote the abstract. Instead I have a nothing title (“Airpower and British society: plans and progress”), and to go along
P. R. C. Groves explains why, in his view, Britain in the early 1930s was possessed by a ‘national defeatism’, namely the idea that war was immoral and should be banned, and the nations disarmed: The origins of the malady may be summarized as: the Voluntary System, the Somme and Passchendaele. The sacrifice of the
