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.
Tate Online has a series of wonderfully melancholy lithographs by James Boswell, showing a collapse in law and order in London – mobs in the streets, bodies hanging from lampposts, looters in museums and so on. Collectively entitled The Fall of London, they were drawn in 1933 and it is suggested that they were intended
Patahistory notes this horror story about a student having her USB drive stolen – and with it, her only copy of her nearly complete PhD thesis. Although she did manage to recover the drive, Dave suggests that this is a timely reminder to make backups. Absolutely! I work as an IT manager in an academic
So far in my PhD, I’ve mainly being reading the available secondary sources pertaining to my topic. There’s still so much to go … but I’m going to take a break from that for a few months, or at least put it on the back burner, in order to start writing a chapter of my
W.E. Johns. Biggles and the Black Peril. London: Red Fox, 2004 [1935]. I felt a bit silly standing in the children’s section of the bookshop looking through all their Biggles books, but I guess I could have pretended I was buying it for a nephew or something …
