I’ve always been anxious to use this website as a forum for discussing points of interest relating to the Second World War, but I’ve been asked to let people know about a number of illustrated talks I’m doing in the next few months, so here you are:

Wednesday 29th September
The Battle of Britain by James Holland
The Memorial Hall
School Lane
Chalfont St Giles, HP8 4JJ
7.30pm: wine and nibbles
8.00pm: event start

The event is organised by the Friends of Chalfont St Giles Community Library Literary Group and profits go towards the upkeep of the Library which is independent of the County Library Service.
Tickets are £5.00 and are available from the Community Library on 01494 874732.
Books will be supplied by The Chalfont Bookshop, Chalfont St Peter
Friday 8th October
Military History Lecture – The Battle of Britain: A Reassessment12:45pm, RUSI, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2ET
A lecture by James Holland, writer and historian of the Second World War. Seventy years after the Battle of Britain, James Holland will argue the battle is viewed predominantly through the narrow prism of the Allied experience, and particularly the perspective of RAF Fighter Command. He will make a case that not only should the battle be seen as a bigger, wider clash between Britain and Germany, but one in which the stakes were even higher than has more recently been claimed.

Tuesday 12th October
Knutsford Literature Festival 2010
8.00pm
Knutsford Methodist Church
Princess Street
Knutsford
Cheshire, WA16 6BY

Tickets are £5.00. Please visit www.knutsfordlitfest.org <http://www.knutsfordlitfest.org>  for booking details.
Books will be supplied by Waterstone’s Knutsford.

I’m also doing talks at the Bridport Festival and Folkestone Festival later in November – details to follow.

There have been a few good books out on the Battle of Britain this year, but Grub Street can always be relied upon to offer us something new and interesting.  Two titles I’ve just got hold of are Finding the Few: Some Outstanding Mysteries of the Battle of Britain Investigated and Solved, and Convoy Peewit: August 8 1940 – The First Day of the Battle of Britain? The first is absolutely fascinating and for anyone who loves both a good mystery and the BofB, is a sure-fire must.  Convoy Peewith, on the other hand, tells the thrilling story of one of the many battered and bludgeoned convoys passing around Britain during that summer.  I’m very conscious that many people who played a vital role during the Battle have been long forgotten so it’s great to see that this incredible story is being told.  I couldn’t recommend either more highly, not least because Andy Saunders is a historian who really knows his stuff and who has been getting his hands dirty with the most incredible research for more than thirty years.

I’m hoping we can put the script of this film I’m doing to bed this week, and so have been going through the rough cut and trying to make sure I’ve got as much as possible covered.  When you’re used to writing books of 200,000 words, reducing that to an hour of TV is pretty difficult and obviously there’s going to be a large amount that has to be left out.

But here’s one point I’ve been thinking about: what could the Luftwaffe have done differently?  If, as I still believe, (despite messages coming in claiming that Hurricane was the best Battle of Britain fighter), that the Germans had the best fighter plane, surely they should have made a larger impact on the outcome?  Well, obviously, shortage of fuel was one of the issues, and although they certainly had the technology, they chose not to use auxiliary fuel tanks that would have made life a great deal easier for them.  Second, they should have been given free rein all the time and not made to escort the bombers at ridiculously slow speeds. Read more…

I’ve just been looking through a collection of Commando and War Picture Library covers collected in a book called ‘Aarrgghh! It’s War!’ and was surprised to see how many of the jackets were painted by Italians in the 1960s and 1970s.  It seems there was a studio in Milan run by two brothers, Ronaldo and Pierro D’Ami, and among those working for them were Pino Dell’Orco and Giorgio de Gaspari, two of the finest war comic book artists you’re ever likely to come across.

Not only did they provide incredible artwork, they’re also historically spot on. I’ve been through the whole book and I couldn’t find a single mistake in terms of equipment, uniforms, detail on aircraft etc.

I wonder what happend to all that original artwork.  Where is it now?  What happened to those artists?  If anyone knows, I’d love to hear from you…

A while back, when I was researching my Battle of Britain book, I found a number of fascinating files in the The National Archives at Kew, London.  They were transcriptions of recorded conversations between Luftwaffe pilots shot down over Britain.  Evidently, they had been bugged and very interesting they were too with all sorts of revelations about morale, expectation of a German invasion, the Spitfire versus the Me109, aircraft shortage, speculation about the future of the war and so on.

For this film I’ve been making, we’ve been digging a little deeper and have since discovered that these buggings took place at Trent Park in North London.  It’s a huge country mansion, once owned by Sir Philip Sassoon, but which, in 1940, was the main interrogation centre for Squadron Leader Denys Felkin’s unit from Air Intelligence.  Apparently, all German pilots shot down were taken to Trent Park first before heading off to a POW camp.  They were even allowed to live in some comfort – presumably to encourage them to drop their guard.  It seemed to work because the transcripts of the buggings – if not the subsequent interrogations – are very revealing indeed.

But as we were filming there the other day, I was looking back through the transcripts once again and rediscovered a conversation that had made me laugh when I first came across it a couple of years ago.  Hopefully this will appeal to all cricket obsessives:

‘Leutnant 416 asked the Intelligence Officer what the term ‘googly’ meant.  He had read in a newspaper about so-called ‘googly shells’.  The IO explained the principle of making the ball break.  After IO went out, the following comment:

A416: ‘That’s nonsense, if they think it’s possible to shoot round the corner!’

(Bernard Bosanquet, right, the inventor of the ‘googly’ an off-break that appears to be a leg-break).