I finally got around to reading Doug Beattie's account of the Garmsir battle in 2006, when 1 Royal Irish was tasked with taking the town in a 2 day op, that instead became a two-week long slogging match with the Terrys ( Read more... )

An interesting alternative view on the Towton grave site on LGM.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/01/a-return-to-towton

I am carefully picking my way through Adam Tooze's majestic Wages of Destruction, his history of the German economy in the inter-war and war years. It is, in every respect, an outstanding read. In these days of the Hitler Channel, convincing people that they know everything imaginable about the Nazis, here comes a fresh and important work from a ( Read more... )

Clemmo payed a flying visit on Monday. He arrived around 9pm, so I wasn't able to get more than a few hours with him. We nattered over beer and he gave me the latest 'gen' on his researches into the Japanese animation industry in Manchuria ( Read more... )

On James Wolcott's blog is a piece on the letters of that misanthropic novelist and arch anti-semite, Celine. Naturally, we are not drawn to the man but his cat, Bebert.
Bebert was a Montparnasse tabby, born probably in 1935. He met his second master in occupied Paris in late 1942. "Magic itself, tact by wavelength," as his master described him, ( Read more... )

I'm enjoying, if that's the right word, DVDs of the Hew Strachan-penned Channel Four documentary on the First World War, first broadcast in 2004. It's a wonderful work, as powerful an authored piece as the classic BBC The Great War, in which John Terraine marshaled historians such as Correlli Barnett to produce a peerless example of television ( Read more... )

I have an e-mail this morning from Andy Lewis at GMT asking whether I have Bomber Command ready to go into preorder at the end of the month. Christ, yes!

I'm hoping having the second game will help me shift more preorders for Nightfighter, which has been languishing at around 570 orders for a number of months now.

Meanwhile, now that Mass Effect ( Read more... )

Blimey! To help me develop Bomber Command a pal in the UK is offering to lend me his copy of Germany and the Second World War: Volume VII: The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943-1944/5 which is the nearest thing to a German official history there is. Only thing is that's £163.00 of book and it's a lot to trust ( Read more... )

I couldn't resist this review from The Spectator.
Shock and aweWednesday, 13th January 2010 ( Read more... )

On my trip I managed to finish Robert Engen's Canadians Under Fire, a fascinating book on which I will post more later ( Read more... )