…hat this would obscure what is supposed to be remembered on that day – the human costs of war – to me, it seems like a pretty negative choice for a day to celebrate what it means to be British (or whatever they would be supposed to do on such a day). Admittedly, in Australia we come close to something similar with Anzac Day, which is a day of national pride as well as mourning and remembrance. But although Anzac day carries more emotional weight,…
…lications page, or the direct link is here.They clearly don’t like static, human-readable URIs at Imperial College, so if the above links don’t work, try going through the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine home page. This is good to see; it’s an important book for my area of study (though I already have a copy of my own, natch!) and one of the few to try to step back and see the bigger picture of how the aeroplane fits int…
…4) 11 February Japanese ARP posters (15) 10 February Acquisitions (2) 4 February Russians (9) 3 February Acquisitions (0) 31 January Sopwith@Fathom (0) 29 January An extremely brief guide to early aeronautical terms, ca. 1909 (10) 27 January Acquisitions (6) 20 January Keep the faith, brother (5) 20 January Acquisitions (0) 15 January Britishness, Englishness too (0) 14 January William Benn, and the Black Ship (1) 12 January The Liberal landslide…
…like that in What Happened to the Corbetts; it’s serious-minded literature designed to warn, but not to make your flesh creep. After a few nights of enduring terrifying aerial bombardments in the slit trench in their back yard, the Corbetts escape Southampton for the relative safety of Hamble, a small village on the coast where their yacht is moored. This part of the novel is very effective. Though they are no longer at risk of being killed by a b…
…enerally pessimistic British view of aircraft as bringers of death and destruction. It’s just that they were seen to be (potentially) so incredibly destructive as to make war unthinkable (itself a pretty common reaction to new weapons). Still, it’s also the same basic idea of Squier and his compatriots. Maybe it’s at this point that the optimism/pessimism dichotomy breaks down and ceases to be useful. But I do think it’s basically correct, and in…
…istory-teaching by replacing narrow nationalist by a general review of the human record This seems odd to me, because The Outline of History was surely one of his better known works (certainly of his 1920s output), and it’s still read today.1 So it doesn’t seem particularly necessary to explain what it’s about. Perhaps he viewed it as his most significant book? That several of his later books relate to it, or at least to allude to its title, might…
…hat, singularitarians!) Or so I gather from a quick skim. Azar Gat. War in Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. I’m ashamed to say I still haven’t read his Fascist and Liberal Visions of War. This new one looks at the evolutionary roots of war, and the way in which technology and culture have (overall) limited the incidence of war more recently, and tackles many other big questions along the way. Or so I gather from a quick s…
…clear weapons. How many people during that transition read JB Priestley’s ‘Russia, the Atom and the West’ in the New Statesman? Or heard the Nobel-winning chemist Linus Pauling rail against nuclear arms? And how many read On the Beach? Nevil Shute’s novel was the great popular work on the gravest matter besetting civilisation.2 Haigh is right to see that the two books have a great deal in common. What Happened, like On the Beach, is a conventional…
…ng forced to, thanks to Skoob Books and the Imperial War Museum. I am only human, it turns out. Norman Angell. The Great Illusion — Now. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938. A Penguin Special (still in dust jacket!) update of the 1908 classic (which is included in an abridged form), arguing that war still isn’t any good for anyone. In part, because of the knock-out blow … Norman Franks. Air Battle for Dunkirk: 26 May-3 June 1940. London: Grub Street, 200…
…war and society, culture, race, gender, sexuality, disability, and the non-human. Preparations for and aftermaths of wars are as significant as the wars themselves. Opposition to war needs to be considered alongside the conduct of war. Representations of war in literature, films, TV, games etc are just as valid objects of study as empirical evidence of reality (although fictional representations should be related to the real world — no fictional u…
