John S. Partington. Building Cosmopolis: The Political Thought of H. G. Wells. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2003. A very highly regarded book on Wells’ ideas about a world state and how to get one, a subject which I have dipped into insofar as it involves airpower (which is frequently).
Later this week I’m going to THATCamp Melbourne. What’s THATCamp, you ask? THATCamp stands for The Humanities and Technology Camp. It’s an unconference devoted to exploring the ways in which the humanities and digital technology can work together. It is informal and collegial: attendees vote on the programme on the first morning. It’s practical and
Lead item in today’s Glasgow Herald is a report that ‘a German U-boat is believed to have reached waters somewhere off the North Atlantic coast of America’ (7). Slow news day? Not really; the real story is the way the war is creeping ever closer to America, and vice versa. The U-boat news was announced
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] Libya now holds an unfortunate record. It is the country which has the longest experience of aerial bombardment. Libya was first bombed in 1911, by Italy; now, in 2011, it is being bombed by its own air force. That makes it just under a century from the first bomb to the latest.
By recapturing from Italian forces Berbera, the capital of British Somaliland, a small part of the British Empire has been restored. Royal Navy warships landed Army troops at the port, suffering ‘negligible’ (Glasgow Herald, 5) casualties. RAF armoured cars assisted too. This adds to the Allied offensive against Addis Ababa: ‘British Empire troops are now
Philip Anthony Towle. Pilots and Rebels: The Use of Aircraft in Unconventional Warfare 1918-1988. London: Brassey’s, 1989. From air control to counterinsurgency. A bit RAF-centric until after 1945.
Today the Glasgow Herald returns to what has been the predominant theme of the last week, America’s increasing commitment to the Allied cause, here represented by a ‘world broadcast’ made by Roosevelt on Saturday (5). Fearlessly he castigated the Axis partners — “these modern tyrants” with their “stuff and nonsense” about the master race. Their
The war news today is much closer to home for the Glasgow Herald than usual. A big air raid last night on ‘a Central district of Scotland’ (5) is vividly described, as though the reporter had witnessed it: readers would know for themselves just how far away it was. One Nazi ‘plane which appeared to
The big news today is that the latest Italian offensive against Greek forces in the Tepelini sector has been a disaster. War correspondents estimate 10,000 Italian casualties, including 2000 dead; yet ‘it was stated in authoritative circles in London yesterday that the Italians do not appear to have made any perceptible progress’ (5). This is
The Glasgow Herald today again leads with Lease-and-Lend, specifically the massive appropriation request made by Roosevelt to Congress — over half a billion pounds’ worth of ‘aircraft and aeronautical material, including engines, spares, and accessories’ alone (5). The Bill will be ready for debate early next week: the Speak of the House of Representatives, Sam
