I was on ABC New England again today, my fourth contribution to ‘The road to war’, looking at the events of 3-9 September 1914. My main topic was the Battle of the Marne — the advance of the German 1st and 2nd Armies towards Paris, the evacuation of the French government from the capital along […]
On ABC New England last week I briefly mentioned rumours of secret Zeppelin bases in Britain in the early months of the First World War. So far as I have been able to determine, the stories, which peaked in October 1914, centred on three locations: the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands and the Chiltern Hills.
My third contribution to ABC New England’s ‘The road to war’ series is now online. Today I looked at the events of 20-26 August 1914, focusing particularly on events in Belgium: the march of the German 1st Army through Brussels, 320,000-strong; more German atrocities against civilians, as well as the burning of the library at
A few years ago I argued that ‘the Few’ in Winston Churchill’s famous speech of 20 August 1940 didn’t refer to the pilots of Fighter Command, as is almost universally assumed, but instead referred to all British airmen, or even perhaps specifically the airmen of Bomber Command, since he spends about two paragraphs talking about
The 1955 novel Biggles in Australia is the subject of an interesting article in Inside Story by Adam Nicol, ‘Uncivil aviation: Biggles down under’ (I like the line ‘The common term “civil aviation” — that is, flight for leisure — suggests that aviation is intrinsically warlike’), which could be usefully read alongside my UNE colleague
Kristen Alexander. Australia’s Few and the Battle of Britain. Sydney: NewSouth, 2014. As an Australian, every time I watch Battle of Britain I notice the mention of the 21 Australian pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain, and the 14 who were killed (these numbers are actually undercounts). This is the story of eight
My second contribution for ABC New England to the increasingly inaccurately named series ‘The road to war’ was broadcast today, and is online here. Increasingly inaccurate because my topic today was the outbreak of war in August 1914 between Germany on the one hand and France and especially poor little Belgium on the other, including
When the present is too painful to think about, there is always the past to retreat into. Japanese planes forced down an airliner which was flying from Hong Kong to Wuchow to-day [24 August 1938], and, it is reported, machine-gunned the passengers. Of 18 people in the plane it is believed that 15 have either
An update of my list of early 20th century British newspapers online is well overdue. As such, there are a large number of new titles available (some only for a limited range of years), along with the usual additional ranges of years for existing titles. But it’s clear that the imminent First World War centenary
Today I had my very first radio appearance, on ABC New England North West, talking to Kelly Fuller on the Mornings show. I was talking about what was happening in Europe 100 years ago, during the July Crisis of 1914. More specifically, I spoke about the Royal Navy’s test mobilisation at Spithead (above) and the
