…p but this is not thought capable of such a ‘bold exploit’. Which is probably true: Baby, the only airship possessed by the government at this time, was not a very robust craft and was not flown much until rebuilt as Beta in 1910. The Standard has another idea: One “explanation” is that some one owns an airship, and is trying it at night. It is known that there are one or two under secret construction in the country, but the difficulty is, given t…
…re than Germany does to Belgian balloons which land in its territory. Frustratingly, there is nothing here about what evidence there is for such visitations. It’s not clear if Belgium has been experiencing something like the British scareships or whether the Belgian army routinely detects Zeppelins flying over its borders. Either seems plausible. Otherwise, the press seems to be reverting to its more usual defence preoccupation: dreadnoughts. Germ…
…with an anarchist. Aldred was a bit of an unorthodox anarchist, he repeatedly ran for Parliament, usually racking up vote totals in the low hundreds. The Strickland Press was started in 1939 with the money from a bequest to Aldred from a Sir Walter Strickland (who was a baronet, not a knight) who had died the previous year. Aldred had earlier carried on publishing activities on a smaller scale under the imprint Bakunin Press. A picture of the Stri…
…caused by the appearance of the airship with its searchlights, it became evident that the rumour was not without foundation. Impressive as this flight is, a distance of 300 miles would not nearly be enough to fly from Germany to Britain (even setting aside the fact that Zeppelin II’s first flight was only a few days ago). But the Count is getting there….
The new Fortnightly Review (actually a monthly, of course) is out today. Each issue opens with a review of ‘Imperial and foreign affairs’, which is usually written by J. L. Garvin, editor of the Observer and a figure of great influence in Conservative politics. Assuming that it is he who penned this Review‘s review, Garvin uses the scareship episode as an excuse to attack the Liberal government. It’s part of a long excursion which takes in the re…
…hich was freely available to anyone with an internet connection will now only be open to those who can afford to pay. Presumably that includes big universities and libraries (although even librarians at Yale, of all places, are complaining that digital resources are getting to expensive, according to this H-Albion post), but what about smaller universities, local libraries, schools, independent researchers? There is the individual subscription, bu…
…ous Nazis. Erik Lund About time we had a P. B. post! Brett Holman Ask a silly question, get a sensible answer! :) I’d forgotten about Patrick Moore; I guess he gets an exemption as an eccentric old boffin. Personally I tend to associate monocles with the upper-class twit stereotype even more than evil Nazi officers but perhaps that’s me. Erik: Yes, I’m trying to up the ratio in the hopes of getting a certification from the International Associatio…
…s the title of this post. The windows on either side give the names of nearly all who served (a pamphlet put out by the Ian Potter Museum of Art, clearly the result of a considerable amount of historical spadework, lists some more). Those who died have a section devoted to them at the very top. I was intrigued by one of the names, S. J. Tong Way. It stands out among all the other, Anglo-Saxon names. I thought perhaps he was descended from one of t…
…blication, by War in History. It’s about the international air force idea and is entitled ‘World police for world peace: British internationalism and the threat of a knock-out blow from the air, 1919-1945’. It won’t actually appear for some time, but under the terms of the publishing agreement I’m allowed to make the originally-submitted version (i.e. before peer review) available for download. It can be found from my publications page….
…he rude drawings, though. Thake is perhaps best remembered today for the wry series of linocuts he produced for his Christmas cards every year from 1941, and this is probably the best-known, An Opera House in every home (1972). A few years ago, I was lucky to see a retrospective exhibition of his Christmas card images (it was literally held across the road from my workplace) and more than his war work I fancy they gave me a keen insight into his p…
