1995 non-fiction, an informal look at money-laundering.
Since I was in Leeds, I went to the Royal Armouries Museum.
2003 non-fiction, a study of six British post-war technological projects.
When the V-22 Osprey was still in development, one of the major roles it was expected to fill was that of submarine hunting. But this never happened, to the point that it's now largely been forgotten that it was ever contemplated. Why?
2013 non-fiction; Houston looks into the history and evolution of a variety of punctuation marks.
2019 non-fiction, examining the life and work of Letitia Landon.
2008 non-fiction, an informal history of English science in the age of Joseph Banks, William Herschel and Humphry Davy.
I went to what's left of Brooklands, near Weybridge.
2019 non-fiction, examining the life and work of Gropius.
2019 non-fiction. A history of sewing and embroidery, trying to recover the stories of the people who did it.
2018 non-fiction. HMS Erebus had already travelled to the Ross Ice Shelf; in 1845, she was sent to search for the Northwest Passage, and never came back.
2018 non-fiction, an informal look at the history, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, of fraud.
On a slightly crisp December day, I went to the National Army Museum in Chelsea.
The Victoria and Albert Museum was having two computer-related exhibitions. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
The West Wycombe Caves are quite local to me, just on the other side of High Wycombe, and a guest felt like seeing them. They have some historical interest.
For over a century, people have speculated about the identity of "Jack the Ripper", the unknown killer who butchered at least five women in Whitechaper during the latter half of 1888.
I went to the Museum of London to see a particular exhibition, and stayed to see the rest of it.
The Geffrye Museum in Hoxton is about to close down for an extended refurbishment, so I went along to it. As usual, the rooms were decorated for a period Christmas.
2002 non-fiction: an experienced foreign reporter gives his views on the fundamental psychological brokenness of war.
2003 non-fiction; the story of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and of Herman Mudgett or H. H. Holmes, America's first serial killer.
This short book is a survey of histories of the Second World War.
For over a hundred years, the Royal Navy had been expecting to win the next Trafalgar. On 31 May 1916 off the Danish coast they got their chance, and it didn't go as well as might have been hoped.
1998 non-fiction, an informal history of the age of the telegraph.
The Midland Air Museum is round the back of Coventry airport, next door to the now-deceased Electric Railway Museum, and I visited it on the same day. It has a strong focus on Armstrong Whitworth and related companies, which had a factory here. All photos are cc-by-sa as usual.
The Electric Railway Museum is losing its site, and its last open day was last Sunday (8 October 2017). All photos are cc-by-sa as usual.
On Suomenlinna, a complex of islands in the bay of Helsinki, lies the submarine Vesikko. With photographs (all taken on the Lumix GF1): cc-by-sa on everything.
On Suomenlinna, a complex of islands in the bay of Helsinki, lies the Military Museum of Finland. With photographs (all taken on the Lumix GF1): cc-by-sa on everything.
Near the Jyväskylä airport at Tikkakoski is the Suomen Ilmavoimamuseo, the museum of the Finnish Air Force. With photographs (all taken on the Lumix GF1): cc-by-sa on everything.
On a slightly warm February day, to Farnborough to visit the museum on the former site of the Royal Aeronautical Establishment at Farnborough. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
Also over Easter, I went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
As I was in Manchester over Easter, I visited the IWM North, the only one of the five IWM sites I hadn't been to. It was a bit of a disappointment. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
Shortly after Christmas I went to the Wallace Collection for the first time. I could spend days there. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
More from the Science Museum last Boxing Day Bank Holiday. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
Since yesterday was the Boxing Day Bank Holiday, I went to the Science Museum for their Cosmonauts exhibition. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything. (I'd been told photography was prohibited, but there were no signs and nobody tried to stop me. I didn't use flash, which may have helped.)
Ithacus was a 1966 study by Douglas, producers of the DC- series transport aircraft and the Thor IRBM, for a sub-orbital troop transport.
2013 non-fiction, an informal history of the rise and fall (sorry) of the man-carrying balloon.
2008 non-fiction, an informal history of the shipping container. Until the Second World War, almost all non-bulk freight was breakbulk, loaded one piece at a time into a ship's hold. Fifty years later, pretty much everything long-distance was going in containers. How did the change come about?
To the de Havilland museum, on the last weekend before it closed for the winter. Many images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
On Sunday I visited the Clapham South deep-level shelter. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
Strictly speaking, the Ålands Sjöfartsmuseum. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
1995 non-fiction. In October 1957, the core of Windscale's Pile 1 caught fire, burned for three days, and spread radioactive contamination across what was then Cumberland. This is the official history of the incident and its aftermath.
To Firepower, the Royal Artillery Museum. I hadn't been for eight years, and things had changed a bit. Many photos follow; cc-by-sa on everything.
1978, popular history. Tuchman recounts the history of France and some nearby countries in the latter part of the Fourteenth Century, with particular focus on the nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy.
On a chilly December day, I drove to Greenwich (do not do this, by the way; if you don't have twenty-odd quid in coins or a disposable credit card, just park in Lewisham, it's less hassle) and visited the National Maritime Museum. (Many photos follow; cc-by-sa on everything.)
Yesterday I visited the Didcot Railway Centre for the first time in really quite a few years; probably at least thirty. Lots of images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
The D-21 was a supersonic reconnaissance drone used briefly in the 1960s and 1970s.
Earlier this month I visited the Swedish Air Force Museum near Linköping, on the site where Carl Cederström (Sweden's first aviator, like so many early flyers a member of the landed gentry with an interest in machinery and little to do) established the first Swedish flying school. Lots of images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
Aircraft-carrying submarines seem, superficially, like a really good idea. Unfortunately in practice they haven't really worked.
Homœopathy has some very strange ideas. But where did it actually come from?
The Sea Dart (try not to associate that in your mind with Lawn Dart) was to be a supersonic flying-boat fighter.
HMAS Melbourne was the Royal Australian Navy's last aircraft carrier (to date).
The Saunders-Roe SR.45 Princess was the largest all-metal flying-boat ever built. Only three were made, and none was ever sold.
Guy Fawkes is often described as "the only man to enter Parliament with honest intentions". But what did he really aspire to do?
The YF-23 was a prototype that competed against the Lockheed YF-22 to become the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter in the 1990s; the Lockheed plane won.
The Yak-38 (NATO reporting name "Forger") was the Soviet carrier-borne fixed-wing aircraft of the Cold War.
The XV-4 was a prototype V/STOL aircraft built for the US Army.
The YB-35 and YB-49 were flying-wing bomber prototypes built during and in the wake of the Second World War.
The SeaMaster was to be a flying-boat strategic bomber for the U.S. Navy.
Yeah, I pretty much have to do this one, don't I? The Valkyrie was to be a Mach 3 high-altitude nuclear bomber.
The Vigilante was a carrier-borne supersonic bomber.
The TSR-2 was to be a highly capable low-and-fast bomber and reconnaissance aircraft. It was famously cancelled in 1965.
Not the ancestor of what would become the SR-71, this A-12 was to be the US Navy's very own stealth bomber.
One of the desiderata of an air defence system is to put defending fighters close to the high-value targets. That way they don't get decoyed away by diversionary attacks, giving the enemy bombers a clear run, because they're dedicated to protecting a specific target; nor do they need massive endurance (adding to weight), if they don't need to make long-distance flights.
The Cutlass was a high-subsonic carrier-borne fighter, flying off Essex and Midway-class carriers.
The Helistat was a hybrid airship/helicopter combination, designed for heavy vertical lift.
Kershaw examines ten choices made during the years 1940-1941 that, in his opinion, substantially affected the course of the Second World War.
One of the great scars on the American military-aviation psyche was the unescorted bomber. As the men who'd been on the front lines during the Second World War became the leaders of the Air Force, they tried to do something about it.
The Hustler was not just the first aircraft to be named after a pornographic magazine (this is a lie, it first flew nearly twenty years before that was thought of), it was the world's first operational supersonic bomber.
The Peacemaker was the world's first intercontinental bomber, and the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft ever built.
The Short Mayo Composite was a solution to the range problem of fixed-wing aircraft.
The Caproni Ca.60, called the Noviplano or Capronissimo, was a prototype flying-boat airliner. Built in 1921,