This is the story of the first Blitz and the first Battle of Britain, featuring a full account of the first Zeppelin crash site excavation and also covering airfields, gun sites, searchlights, and radio listening posts. The book features contemporary accounts and archive photographs alongside the reports and photographs from the excavations, including Hunstanton, Monkhams, Chingford and North Weald Basset, the Lea Valley, Potters Bar and Theberton. Written in collaboration between academic archaeologists and aviation enthusiasts/metal detectorists, this fascinating project has also been the subject of a BBC2 Timewatch documentary.
This is the story of the first Blitz and the first Battle of Britain, featuring a full account of the first Zeppelin crash site excavation and also covering airfields, gun sites, searchlights, and radio listening posts. The book features contemporary accounts and archive photographs alongside the reports and photographs from the excavations, including Hunstanton, Monkhams, Chingford and North Weald Basset, the Lea Valley, Potters Bar and Theberton. Written in collaboration between academic archaeologists and aviation enthusiasts/metal detectorists, this fascinating project has also been the subject of a BBC2 Timewatch documentary.
Zeppelins of World War I details the saga of the most daring aerial campaigns of the Great War, the story of the development of dirigibles by Germany as machines of war, the psychological horror of air raids on London, the heroic efforts of England’s fighter pilots to shoot down these invading monsters and the consequent failure of Zeppelins to bring England to its knees.
Across Europe, the horror of war is destroying lives and separating families. Yield or fight? When tragedy strikes Freddie's family, he and his soldier brother must go on the run, battling for their survival. Jump or burn? Without a parachute, that's the choice Ernst knows he will face if his Zeppelin is shot down. Bravery takes different forms. How far would you go to stand up for what's right?
‘Zeppelin Nights is social history at its best... White creates a vivid picture of a city changed forever by war’ The Times 2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. In those four decisive years, London was irrevocably changed. Soldiers passed through the capital on their way to the front and wounded men were brought back to be treated in London’s hospitals. At night, London plunged into darkness for fear of Zeppelins that raided the city. Meanwhile, women escaped the drudgery of domestic service to work as munitionettes. Full employment put money into the pockets of the poor for the first time. Self-appointed moral guardians seize the chance to clamp down on drink, frivolous entertainment and licentious behaviour. Even against a war-torn landscape, Londoners were determined to get on with their lives, firmly resolved not to let Germans or puritans spoil their enjoyment. Peopled with patriots and pacifists, clergymen and thieves, bluestockings and prostitutes, Jerry White’s magnificent panorama reveals a battle-scarred yet dynamic, flourishing city. ‘Jerry White's name on a title page is a guarantee of a lively, compassionate book full of striking incidents and memorable images... This is a fast-paced social history that never stumbles... A well-orchestrated polyphony of voices that brings history alive’ Guardian
Why did Rome abandon Britain in the early 5th century? According to Neil Faulkner, the centralized, military-bureaucratic state, governed by a class of super-rich landlords and apparatchiks, had siphoned wealth out of the province, with the result that the towns declined and the countryside was depressed. When the army withdrew to defend the imperial heartlands, the remaining Romano-British elite succumbed to a combination of warlord power, barbarian attack, and popular revolt.
Bringing together a diverse collection of primary source documents, this book illuminates the events and experiences of World War I from a variety of perspectives, from soldiers on the front lines to civilians supporting the war effort at home. Part of Bloomsbury's Voices of an Era series, this carefully curated collection highlight the wartime experiences of a diverse array of individuals from around the globe. In addition to covering major military innovations and turning points, documents explore how issues of gender, race,diplomacy, and empire building impacted individuals' experience of the Great War. Each of the 42 documents includes contextual information and thought-provoking questions to guide readers in their exploration of the text. In addition to high-interest sidebars, in-text glossary definitions, biographical snapshots of key figures, and a comprehensive chronology of the war, the book also includes a guide to evaluating and interpreting primary sources that bolsters readers' analytical and critical thinking skills. Although it was nicknamed "the war to end all wars," World War I heralded the start of modern-day conflicts. The human toll of the Great War was immense-an estimated 9 million soldiers died on the battlefield, while more than 5 million civilians died as the result of military actions, disease, or famine. In the wake of World War I, empires crumbled and new nations won their independence. Although the events and aftermath of World War I happened on an epic scale, the conflict is best understood through the human lens provided by these primary sources.
A quarter of a century before the Blitz of 1940, the inhabitants of south-west Essex were terrorized by an earlier aerial menace. Over the course of four years, German Zeppelins, Gothas and Giants flew above their homes, unleashing hundreds of highly explosive and incendiary bombs on London. During three of these raids, bombs were dropped on Leyton and many others landed elsewhere in south-west Essex. These early air raids are now largely forgotten in local memory, but for the inhabitants of the time the attacks were unprecedented, unexpected and lethal.In the years since the Great War a great deal of literature has been published on London's first air raids and about the defence network that evolved around the metropolis, but what happened in the capital's eastern suburbs and the nearby Essex countryside has received less coverage. This meticulously researched and insightful book attempts to put that right, looking at the area which, in 1914, was part of south-west Essex, but now comprises the London boroughs of Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Havering, Newham, and Barking and Dagenham.Focussing in particular on Leyton and Ilford, this is the first book to ever examine what happened before and after the raiders reached and bombarded the capital. The author has included a wide range of contemporary letters, diaries and newspaper reports from local sources, plus several previously unseen photographs. To set the story in its wider context, the book also contains a wealth of information about the defence of the London area generally and vivid reports from combatants on both sides.
The Golden Age of Aviation is brought to life in this story of the giant Zeppelin airships that once roamed the sky—a story that ended with the fiery destruction of the Hindenburg. “Genius . . . a definitive tale of an incredible time when mere mortals learned to fly.”—Keith O’Brien, The New York Times At the dawn of the twentieth century, when human flight was still considered an impossibility, Germany’s Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin vied with the Wright Brothers to build the world’s first successful flying machine. As the Wrights labored to invent the airplane, Zeppelin fathered the remarkable airship, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two types of aircraft and their innovators that would last for decades, in the quest to control one of humanity’s most inspiring achievements. And it was the airship—not the airplane—that led the way. In the glittery 1920s, the count’s brilliant protégé, Hugo Eckener, achieved undreamed-of feats of daring and skill, including the extraordinary Round-the-World voyage of the Graf Zeppelin. At a time when America’s airplanes—rickety deathtraps held together by glue, screws, and luck—could barely make it from New York to Washington, D.C., Eckener’s airships serenely traversed oceans without a single crash, fatality, or injury. What Charles Lindbergh almost died doing—crossing the Atlantic in 1927—Eckener had effortlessly accomplished three years before the Spirit of St. Louis even took off. Even as the Nazis sought to exploit Zeppelins for their own nefarious purposes, Eckener built his masterwork, the behemoth Hindenburg—a marvel of design and engineering. Determined to forge an airline empire under the new flagship, Eckener met his match in Juan Trippe, the ruthlessly ambitious king of Pan American Airways, who believed his fleet of next-generation planes would vanquish Eckener’s coming airship armada. It was a fight only one man—and one technology—could win. Countering each other’s moves on the global chessboard, each seeking to wrest the advantage from his rival, the struggle for mastery of the air was a clash not only of technologies but of business, diplomacy, politics, personalities, and the two men’s vastly different dreams of the future. Empires of the Sky is the sweeping, untold tale of the duel that transfixed the world and helped create our modern age.
