Two great writers were entertained to lunch. From @gutenberg_org: How cool! I love the Holmes stories. They are regularly re-read.
Aircraft & Flying
Books
History
I had always been interested in the story of the TSR2 (Tactical Strike Reconnaissance) aircraft ever since I read about it in an old copy of Take Off magazine a long time ago. It was a story shrouded in faded grandeur, a tale of brilliant and far-sighted engineering defeated by mucky politics, parsimonious accountants and […]
Books
History
I find that no matter how many books I read on the second world war, there’s always something new to discover, usually the result of a fresh perspective on old facts. Daniel Todman’s dual volume work on Britain’s War looks well worth adding to the ‘to-read’ pile: .. historians of Todman’s generation are right to […]
Books
My nomadic friend at work dropped this on my desk a while back before heading to catch a cargo ship out of Kiel. We’d been discussing the madness of Nixon over coffee one day in order to avoid any actual work, and he reckoned I’d enjoy this, and he was right. It’s a riveting overview […]
Books
Human Rights
Muse
The God Squad is the remarkable true story of a survivor, told with an extraordinary lack of bitterness for one so shockingly and shamefully treated. In Paddy Doyle’s own words: ‘It is about a society’s abdication of responsibility to a child. The fact that I was that child, and that the book is about my […]
Books
Fuck the patriarchy
Retro
Fascinating little snippet from the Finding Out Annual 1979. Whoever wrote this was fairly feminist – “left to slave in their homes”! Right on!
Books
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens My rating: 5 of 5 stars “I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our […]
Books
Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 by Max Hastings My rating: 4 of 5 stars Having also read The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Munro Clark, I found ‘Catastrophe’ to be rather light on the lead up to war, particularly on the Serbian state and the personalities involved. Hastings excels […]
Books
Want
Wired had a review a while back about Velvet by Ed Brubaker, which looks worth getting. In the opening issue of the comic book Velvet, the secretary to the director of an elite British spy agency decides to go digging into the mysterious death of a secret agent. This, she learns, is a mistake, and […]
Books
I haven’t allowed myself a new book in a while, largely due to the small mountain of unread books I already have. Still, I had to get one one the first war, given the year that’s in it. ‘Speccy Nation’ just slipped in there for nostaglia. Of course, the real reason I was bookshopping was […]