Kristen Alexander. Taking Flight: Lores Bonney’s Extraordinary Flying Career. Canberra: NLA Publishing, 2016. If Australia had an equivalent to Amy Johnson, Jean Batten, and Amelia Earhart, it was Lores Bonney: the first woman to fly around Australia (1932), the first woman to fly from Australia to England (1933), the first person to fly from Australia […]
On Friday, 1 April 2016, I gave my second Humanities Research Seminar (again introduced by Nathan Wise) at the University of New England, under the title of ‘Constructing the enemy within: rumours of secret German forts and aerodromes in Britain, August-October 1914’. It was based on a (hopefully) forthcoming article, which in turn is based
In July I’ll be at this year’s Australian Historical Association conference, which is being hosted in Ballarat by Federation University Australia. I’m pushing my aerial theatre project along with a talk entitled ‘The RAF versus the Wottnotts: Hendon’s imaginary wars, 1920-1937’: The Royal Air Force (RAF) Pageants held between 1920 and 1937 at Hendon in
I walked into the local secondhand bookshop thinking I should try to buy something to support them; and of course then walked out with an armful, including: P. M. S. Blackett. Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy. London: Turnstile Press, 1948. Blackett was a bit of an overachiever: the Tizard Committee, the Royal Aircraft
The following article appeared on p. 4 of the 15 June 1914 issue of the Broken Hill (NSW), newspaper, the Barrier Miner: AIRSHIPS AGAINST THE MAD MULLAH Aden, Saturday. Naval Lieutenants Boothby and Richard B. Davies are at Berbera, investigating the feasibility of utilising airships for the purpose of an expedition to subdue the Mad
Edward Bujak. Reckless Fellows: The Gentlemen of the Royal Flying Corps. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015. Much of our understanding of the airmen of the First World War has been dominated by the image of the knight of the air (or debunkings thereof); there hasn’t been a lot of work done from a
One of the advantages of studying wartime airship panics, like the one in January 1915, is the relative abundance of private archives, diaries, letters and interviews for the 1914-1918 period which have been collected and catalogued. This makes it theoretically possible to compare the press view and the official view with the view from below,
Jeremy Black. What If? Counterfactualism and the Problem of History. London: Social Affairs Unit, 2008. What if I confused this book with an expanded edition under a different title? I’d probably end up ordering that edition too. John Connor, Peter Stanley and Peter Yule. The War at Home. The Centenary History of Australia and the
I’ve established from press accounts that there was a phantom airship panic in January 1915, in two parts: a vaguely-defined one in the first half of the month and a much more clearly-delineated one in the last week or 10 days. What I’m going to do here is look at what evidence there is for
I have a new publication out — at least, it’s out electronically, I haven’t seen a physical copy yet! It’s a chapter in a collection published by Melbourne University Press and edited by Michael J. K. Walsh and Andrekos Varnava, Australia and the Great War: Identity, Memory and Mythology. My chapter is entitled ‘The enemy
