Xmas wins! Gus Officer. Six O’Clock Diamond: The Story of a Desert Harrasser. Northcote: Woolhouse Press, 2008. The memoir of a Second World War RAAF Kittyhawk pilot, who in 1942 was shot down over the Western Desert and spent the rest of the war as a POW. Roland Perry. The Australian Light Horse: The Magnificent […]
President Roosevelt had one of his famous ‘fireside chats‘ (i.e. over the radio) with the American people last night. This one would seem to deserve its lead-story status in the Manchester Guardian, as he firmly committed the United States to Britain’s side in the war, even if not as a non-combatant but as the ‘arsenal
Today seems to be a slow news day, if such a thing can exist in the middle of a world war. The Observer leads today with a non-story (7). Free French radio reports that Hitler has demanded the handover to Germany of the Vichy fleet. Petain’s response to this is unknown; for that matter, so
Following Ross’ suggestion I’ve plugged airminded itself into the Google Ngram Viewer (for British English over 1920-2000 with a smoothing of 3). The word wasn’t used until c. 1925 and grew in popularity until the end of the Second World War. It then began its long descent. Around 1960 its heyday was definitely over and
Ian Castle. London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace. Oxford and New York: Osprey Publishing, 2008. Illustrated by Christa Hook. Ian Castle. London 1917-18: The Bomber Blitz. Oxford and Long Island City: Osprey Publishing, 2010. Illustrated by Christa Hook. As the titles suggest, these two entries in Osprey’s long-running Campaign series dovetail nicely. One takes as its
Finally, something to justify the existence of the Internet. The Google Ngram Viewer takes the corpus of words formed by the Google Books dataset (i.e. books, journals, magazines, but not newspapers) and lets you plot the changes in frequency of selected ones over time. There are all sorts of interesting questions you could (in principle)
J. M. Spaight. Volcano Island. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1943. Although Spaight is one of my guys, I didn’t know from the title alone if it was even about aviation. Turns out that it is; here’s the blurb from the front dustjacket: IN 1939, our Island was peaceful and innocuous; now in 1943, with its volcanic
[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] Earlier this year I was tutor for a subject which explored the idea of genre, using books, films and plays about war for this purpose. One of the texts we read was Primo Levi’s account of his time in Auschwitz, If This Is A Man.1 One of the sections I found most
Roger Beaumont. Might Backed by Right: The International Air Force Concept. Westport and London: Praeger, 2001. Some library gap-filling: it’s the only book on the history of the international air force idea there is, so I ought to have it. Doesn’t devote enough attention to the 1920s and 1930s for my liking, but for once
Cmnd. 124, Defence: Outline of Future Policy, is one of the most famous (and infamous) documents in British military history. It’s better known as the 1957 Defence White Paper, or the Sandys White Paper after the Minister of Defence responsible for it, Duncan Sandys. It ended National Service, committed Britain to nuclear deterrence, and foreshadowed
