…on, the more it will swing in Britain’s favour, and nowhere is this more true than in the air war. Unless they can smash our air-force and air-industry they never can deal a fatal blow to Britain by any means […] Even now our counterstrokes inflict much more damage than we receive. With increasing effect our bombers rain their blows upon vital points of German production and operations. Garvin’s optimism is supported by the Observer‘s air corresp…
…civilian population. Somehow they endure, somehow they crawl out from the rubble and flames and carry on. “Invincible fortifications built by man have crumbled — but man himself is the line that holds.” R.A.F. BLOWS AT GERMANY A list of the last week’s targets. MR. EDEN THANKS BOMB DISPOSAL UNITS “I wish to express my warmest appreciation of the courage and devotion to duty exhibited by all ranks of the bomb disposal units. Your cheerful acceptan…
…or increasingly large civilian aircraft […] flying boats of a new ‘Empire’ design promised considerable savings for passengers and airline operator […] Constructing landplanes with undercarriages strong enough to bear additional weight was expensive, and the increased dead weight of aircraft diminished their payload […] Additional financial savings would accrue from using flying boats rather than landplanes because it would not be necessary to str…
…ich nobody knew in 1917, 1921, 1945 or 1968. That makes it hard for us to truly understand how people thought about the future and, crucially, how that affected their decisions and actions in the present. Considering counterfactual scenarios can help restore this sense of contingency, of uncertainty: what did happen was not necessarily what had to to happen. Or even likely to happen. Besides, historians implicitly indulge in counterfactual thinkin…
…a memorial to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, Empress of India, and Ruler of Quite a Few Other Places. By the time this statue was erected, in 1902 (a year after her death), there can’t have been many cities of any size in the Empire without a Victoria and her imperious gaze. And lastly, Kings Park’s first war memorial, from Australia’s first war — the Boer War. The foundation stone was laid in 1901, when the war was still going, by the Duk…
…over English soil in fifteen minutes’.2 The RAF harasses the airfield construction (using Hinds) and makes ‘a great concerted effort to wipe out some of the main munition factories’.2 But it also becomes aware of rumours that Eurland planned to follow up a period of intensive bombardment on the coastal districts of England by landing troops from a fleet of warships and commandeered liners said to be assembling at a port about 400 miles. Although t…
…-fascist), which I must admit is a bit disappointing. But I am consoled by Ruth’s very kind gift of this lavishly-illustrated catalogue (published by her own press) of James’s wartime work, done while serving in ARP and the Army in London, Scotland and the very different landscape of Iraq. His observations of service life are particularly keen, but also some quite disturbing and somewhat surreal nightmare images. There’s also a bit on his prewar o…
…terror’ in the Evening News in October 1916, revolves in large part around rumour, in this case rumours concerning a series of bizarre deaths taking place across the nation which, so it is hinted, are connected with both the shells crisis and the delay in launching the great offensive. Oddly, given his experiences with the Angel of Mons, early on in ‘The terror’ Machen comes close to saying that rumour is no longer as powerful a force as it once w…
…ings; followed by short spiels by local academics on some of their digital humanities work. There was a lot of really interesting stuff on display, and whether by chance or design each one was digital in a very different way: Susan Lowish spoke about creating a databases of Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara artwork, Ara Irititja, which is deployed in remote Indigenous communities in central Australia to preserve their (and our) cultural heritage…
…the two countries: — Germany Gt. Britain “Dreadnoughts” 9 0 “First-class cruisers” 2 1 “Gunboats” 1 2 “So you will see that Germany has nine monster airships (Dreadnoughts), all capable of making long voyages at fifty miles an hour and carrying several tons of high explosives, while this country has not a single airship which could meet one of these giants in an air battle. They then, somewhat less fairly, claim that in the ‘smaller type of vesse…
