For my third Turning Points talk for ABC New England radio, I chose a topic I ought to know something about: the Battle of Britain! In some ways it’s an obvious choice, and not only for the obvious reason; there are few years in history as dramatic as 1940, and Hitler’s conquest of Britain has […]
In December I’ll be giving a talk at the Aviation Cultures Mk. II: Technology, Culture, Heritage conference at the University of Sydney, entitled ‘Comparing Hendon: aerial theatre in context’. Here’s the abstract: The RAF Pageants held between 1920 and 1937 at Hendon in north London were an annual series of air shows, in which military
I’m very pleased to announce that the Journal of British Studies has accepted my article, ‘The phantom airship panic of 1913: imagining aerial warfare in Britain before the Great War’, for publication. This is exciting for a number of reasons. Naturally, one reason is because it’s another peer-reviewed article (number six, by my count). That’s
I did my second Turning Point for ABC New England radio today, and chose to talk about the founding the League of Nations in 1920. The League is usually considered to be a failure, because it didn’t prevent the Second World War or even play any significant role after the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. But
This photograph purportedly shows a squadron of Italian Savoia-Marchetti S.55X flying boats over the Alps on 1 July 1933, during the second and last of the long-distance formation flights led by the Fascist air minister, Italo Balbo (hence ‘balbo‘, briefly in vogue to describe a large formation of aircraft), Rome to Chicago and back. These
After taking some time to recover after the marathon Road to War, I’m taking part in a new series of talks with ABC New England North West‘s Kelly Fuller, along with fellow members of the UNE School of Humanities Nathan Wise (who came up with the concept), Sarah Lawrence and Richard Scully (and more, if
So, after a month of reposts, my celebration of Airminded’s 10th anniversary is nearly over. All that remains is the surprise which I promised, which is (no surprise!) the PhD thesis I submitted way back in 2009, for which I was subsequently awarded my PhD — after all, Airminded began life as a PhD blog.
[Part of a celebration of Airminded’s 10th anniversary; originally posted on 6 September 2014. The start of my investigation into rumours of, well, secret Zeppelin bases in Britain in 1914, which continued here and here, and concluded here. And will eventually be published somewhere.] On ABC New England last week I briefly mentioned rumours of
[Part of a celebration of Airminded’s 10th anniversary; originally posted on 1 March 2014. This was an initial roughing out of an idea for my next big research project, which hasn’t quite happened because I’ve been distracted by other things and haven’t got any funding yet. But I still hope to pursue it in some
[Part of a celebration of Airminded’s 10th anniversary; originally posted on 15 May 2013. I’ve come up with some absolutely terrible titles for Airminded posts, but I like this one very much.] Roland Garros is today mainly known for having given his name to the home of French tennis. But long before then he was
