Inspired by my chance finding of a 1937 Who’s Who in a secondhand bookshop, and desirous of putting it to use, from time to time I will write up brief biographical notes on people important to the history of airpower propaganda in Britain. The first of these is on L. E. O. Charlton.
I’ve (mostly) finished a big update to my other site, scareships, which is about the British phantom airship scares of 1909 and 1912-3 – essentially, Edwardian UFO waves. To my mind, the fact that people (including, for a time, newspaper editors) believed that German zeppelins were buzzing their country – when in fact they weren’t
This happened a week ago, but it’s rather cool – a re-enactment of the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic by the British airmen Alcock and Brown in June 1919. They used a modified Vickers Vimy, a two-engined aircraft designed for bombing German cities. The Vimy was never used in this role, but a flight
But of course it shouldn’t have to. It was a pointless and tragic waste of human life. References to London’s stoicism during the Blitz are all over the place: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Australian Labor Party foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd (“British bulldog spirit” was how he phrased it on the radio
Leo Amery was a long-serving Conservative MP, minister, imperialist and close contemporary (though not, I think, a close friend) of Winston Churchill’s – they were at Harrow together, where at their first meeting the future staunch foe of Nazi oppression pushed the smaller boy into the school pool. For some reason, he seems to pop
Somehow, Cliopatria has gotten wind of this site, and have already added it to their History Blogroll! So I’d better put some content up, hadn’t I.
I’ve just put in a massive order at Abebooks (which links the catalogues of many secondhand booksellers from around the world). This is not something I will be able to afford to do often, but at the moment I am still working full-time so it is sort of affordable. One thing I’ve found out that
