Brett Holman
It’s the last day of AHA 2026, though the only things on the program for today are historical tours and as I decided (for reasons) to attend online this time, that means the conference is over for me. Though it felt rushed and a bit garbled, I think my talk on London’s air raid shelters in 1917-18...
Brett Holman
Recently, while editing the prewar chapter of Home Fires Burning, I made the decision to cut a few hundred words dealing with H.G. Wells’ ideas about aerial bombardment. And I feel good about it! Why is that? I’m not a Wells scholar by any means, but in the past I have had to engage with...
Brett Holman
My abstract for the Australian Historical Association’s 2026 conference, being held at Macquarie University from 29 June–3 July, has been accepted. My talk is entitled ‘The Underworld: Living and Dying in London’s Air Raid Shelters, 1917-1918’ and this is the abstract: London’s first...
Brett Holman
Content warning: descriptions of death and mutilation. The opening paragraph of the current draft of my next book, about one day over a century ago: Shortly before midday on 13 June 1917, Upper North Street School in Poplar was hit by a single bomb dropped from a German aeroplane. It...
Brett Holman
Like many people – out of the sort of people who know these sorts of things, that is – I knew of Jan Smuts’ key role in the origins of both the RAF and the Air Ministry. It was the so-called ‘Smuts report‘ to the War Cabinet, in August 1917, which set the whole process rolling and, after some...
Brett Holman
Somehow I managed to miss – by exactly a year! – the publication of the third and final volume of Ian Castle’s history of the Zeppelin and Gotha raids: Ian Castle, Zeppelin Onslaught: The Forgotten Blitz 1914–1915 (Barnsley: Frontline, 2018). Ian Castle, Zeppelin Inferno: The Forgotten...