Can any better sport or amusement be imagined that could be obtained with an airship of the Zodiac type, endowed with a speed of 40 miles an hour for four hours, or 20 miles an hour for eight times this period, and so on in cubic proportion? Always able to reach a desired goal, but […]
I noticed that I had a few inches of spare shelf space last week, so … Claude Grahame-White and Harry Harper. The Aeroplane in War. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1912. A big survey of military aviation before the First World War – keeping the reading public informed about such innovations as the ‘engine-in-front biplane’. Grahame-White
Via Early Modern Notes comes the news that Gordon Brown wants to turn Remembrance Sunday into British Day. Aside from Sharon’s remarks to the effect that this would obscure what is supposed to be remembered on that day – the human costs of war – to me, it seems like a pretty negative choice for
David List added a most informative comment on my About page the other day, responding to an old post, which I thought I would highlight and respond to here. Regarding my post on a claimed insertion of a German spy by parachute in 1917 (which I doubted), David notes that there were Allied experiments in
Today, it’s a hundred years since voting began in the 1906 general election, in which the ruling Conservatives lost in a landslide to the Liberal Party. The new government, with Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as PM (followed in 1908 by H.A. Asquith), had 400 seats; the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists managed only 156 between them.As a
In a previous post I wondered whether the authors of the 1934 knock-out blow novel Invasion from the Air, Frank McIlraith and Roy Connolly, might have been left-wing, as the artist who (apparently) was supposed to illustrate the book was a communist. I hadn’t been able to turn up any biographical information about either of
The winners of the first Cliopatria Awards for the best history blogs have been announced. Congratulations to all the winners! On the theory that they are the best of the best, the Top Guns of the historioblogosphere if you will, I have added Frog in a Well (Best Group Blog), BibliOdyssey (Best New Blog)Airminded was
Rudyard Kipling, that poet of empire, also wrote two very airminded science fiction stories: “With the night mail” (1905) and a sequel, “As easy as A.B.C.” (1912). Both were set in the then-remote 21st century, and revolved around the Aerial Board of Control – the ABC of the second story’s title. This is effectively a
Stephen Bungay. The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain. London: Aurum Press, 2000. Recent-ish and apparently revisionist.
