‘The Hum‘ is a mysterious low-frequency sound just at the edge of hearing which seems to infect some places, but which only some people can detect. What causes it is unknown — theories range from factories and air conditioners to gravitational waves — and responsible authorities often deny that it exists at all. The most […]
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] On 29 March 1939, Croydon airport was the site of an extraordinary scene, as the Daily Express reported: NEARLY 400 Jewish refugees streamed into Croydon in a succession of air liners yesterday — the biggest influx the airport had ever experienced. They came from Danzig, the Polish Corridor, Cologne, Berlin, Vienna, Switzerland
Breaking the morale of a civilian population by means of aerial bombardment is quite difficult. But it’s a lot easier if you only have to do it in graphical form. Here bombs of type ‘killed’, ‘wounded’, ‘evacuated’, ‘deprived of utilities’ and ‘homes destroyed’ come thundering down towards the edifice ‘will to resist’, which is formed
After knocking together The Scareship Age, I started working on turning my Sudeten crisis posts into an e-book version. I knew there’d be a fair amount of work, but I underestimated the value of ‘fair’. Finding and cleaning up formatting errors is a very slow and tedious business, as is creating an index (though it
Roger Moorhouse. Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler’s Capital, 1939-45. London: Vintage, 2010. Bomber Command found Berlin to be of great interest, so it’s something I should know more about. There are two chapters on Berlin under the raids, and the topic appears elsewhere in the book too: for example, how Berliners adapted
So, as I was saying, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence about what was on Tolkien’s mind when he was writing The Hobbit, in particular about the issue of aerial warfare. For example, I don’t know what he made of the bombing of Guernica, which took place about 5 months before The Hobbit (and
Let’s turn now to Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Smaug’s attack on Lake-town (Esgaroth).1 In my PhD thesis I identified six characteristics of the ideal theory of the knock-out blow from the air: it would be a surprise attack, on a large scale, which would strike at the interdependent structures and civilian morale of its targets,
John Garth. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth. London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003. Never let it be said I’m not willing to go the extra mile for this blog! Actually, I read this last year and it’s well worth having, not only for Tolkien fans but also as an examination of a different
Let’s begin at the beginning: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. No, that’s not the beginning. For understanding J. R. R. Tolkien and the aeroplane, the beginning is the Great War. He may have seen one flying overhead at Birmingham, where he grew up and went to school, or at Oxford,
Last year Alun Salt pointed out to me a proposal for a collection of essays on the theme of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and history, and asked if I’d thought about sending in something on ideas about airpower and the dragon Smaug. I hadn’t, but immediately saw what he was on about! I
