Aside from the whole shadow-of-the-bomber thing, I have an amateur (okay – more amateur, then) interest in the Cold War and the fear of nuclear war. Partly because of the obvious continuities and parallels with the area I’m studying, but also because I’m old enough to remember the last flowering of nuclear paranoia in the […]
‘R101 RIDING AT HER HOME MAST. Set in a frame of typical English countryside beauty, R101, product of modern engineering and cornerstone of Britain’s hopes of commercial air supremacy, rides at her mast at Cardington, in Bedfordshire. This mooring mast was specially built to facilitate the handling of Britain’s largest airships, R100 and R101, which
Yes, I went a bit crazy with the credit card … Hugh Addison. The Battle of London. London: Herbert Jenkins, n.d. [1923]. The Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy attempts to start a revolution in London, aided by a surprise air raid from Germany. But they didn’t count on the RAF’s massive retaliatory response on Berlin … G. Cornwallis-West.
This is a real oddity, and I still can’t wrap my head around it. In 1910, a Romanian named Henri Coandă built and flew the world’s first jet aircraft. Yes, 1910! That’s two whole decades before Frank Whittle. And less than a decade after the Wright brothers!
Barry D. Powers. Strategy Without Slide-Rule: British Air Strategy 1914-1939. London: Croom Helm, 1976. NB. The subtitle is inaccurate; the period covered is really more like 1914-1931! Powers has two objects in mind: firstly, to show that air policy should be ‘seen as a complicated interaction of the factors involved — popular conceptions, press campaigns,
Richard Griffiths. Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. I love this book. So I bought it. A brilliantly readable study of who liked the Nazis and why, including a few pages specifically on ‘the world of aviation’ (137-41). Adrian Brunel, Brian Desmond Hurst, and Michael
Well, as has kindly been pointed out to me, I missed Mers-el-Kebir day, and I missed Battle of Britain day – but I haven’t forgotten Henri Giffard day! On this day in 1852, near Paris, Giffard (sporting a top hat for the momentous occasion) made the first ever airship flight, covering a distance of 17
Harold Nicolson. Public Faces: A Novel. London: Constable, 1932. A fantasy by the well-known diplomat, politician and diarist (and husband of Vita Sackville-West) about what might happen in 1939 if his political friends were in power, and the storm clouds of war gathering again. I’m not quite sure if it technically counts as an air
A new biographical note on the right-wing aviator and politician Noel Pemberton Billing, who helped turn Britain’s air defences (or lack thereof) into a burning political issue in 1916 and 1917.
David Butler and Gareth Butler. Twentieth-Century British Political Facts, 1900-2000. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Eighth edition. The bible. Well, a bible, anyway. Zara Steiner. The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. If this is up to the standards of her Britain and the Origins of the First World War,
