At Investigations of a Dog, Gavin Robinson (as seen on Twitter!) has started post-blogging the letters of Nehemiah Wharton, a sergeant in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. The first letter is up: 16 August 1642. Gavin provides context and interpretation, but he’s also transcribing the letters in full since the published transcriptions […]
Some common themes here, more or less unintentional… Pam Oliver. Raids on Australia: 1942 and Japan’s Plans for Australia. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010. The title is a bit misleading. Oliver examines Japanese activities in Australia, commercial, government, and individual, in the decades before 1942, as well as Australian government and popular suspicions of
Adelaide (AKA ‘Radelaide’) has more to offer than transport museums, of course. On my last day there I had a look at the South Australian Museum, as well as some of the nearby sights. This copy of a Venus by Antonio Canova was apparently somewhat controversial when presented to the city in 1892, though she
David S. Bird. Nazi Dreamtime: Australian Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2012. An Australian equivalent of Richard Griffiths’ Fellow Travellers of the Right, though this covers the Second World War period as well. The title isn’t an affectation: it seems that the Aboriginal idea of the dreamtime was appropriated by pro-Nazis
A very long time ago, I wrote a post about the claim that this (here, in cropped form) truly iconic image of the Blitz was a German propaganda fake. The claim was made by Gazza, a Millwall FC fan who maintains a website about the history of the club; and the basis for his claim
Dr Beachcombing of Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog kindly dropped me a line to alert me to his post about Public Service Broadcasting, a British music duo who draw on old propaganda and information films for inspiration and samples. A number of these are from the Second World War period, including ‘Spitfire’, ‘London Can Take It’,
After the AHA, I stayed in Adelaide for a few days to see the sights. I have a bit of a thing for maritime museums, so the South Australian Maritime Museum at Port Adelaide was an obvious choice. It became even more obvious when I discovered that the National Railway Museum and the South Australian
Operation Millennium was the RAF’s first ‘thousand bomber raid’, on Cologne on the night of 30 May 1942. By making a maximum effort and by using aircraft and aircrews from training units (since the Admiralty did not consent to the diversion of Coastal Command aircraft), Air Vice-Marshal Harris was able to scrounge a total of
On 17 July 1917, the London Gazette published a proclamation by George V: We, out of Our Royal Will and Authority, do hereby declare and announce that as from the date of this Our Royal Proclamation Our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that all
Michael Molkentin. Flying the Southern Cross: Aviators Charles Ulm and Charles Kingsford Smith. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2012. Molkentin’s first book, Fire in the Sky, was an excellent history of the Australian Flying Corps; and this one looks promising too (not to mention the two he’s got planned, and he’s still got a PhD
