On Sunday 7 December 1941 Japanese aircraft attacked the American Pacific Fleet as it lay peacefully off its base in Hawaii. The attack sank four battleships, seriously damaged another five, destroyed 130 aircraft, and killed 2,403 servicemen. President Roosevelt declared it was a date ‘that would live in infamy’.
It was clever of Bernard Ireland to find a major engagement of the Napoleonic Wars in which the British were involved but which has hitherto been largely ignored. The conflict at Toulon was a campaign rather than a single battle, lasting for five months of 1793, beginning as a British success and ending as a […]
In peacekeeping, the transition period is the most dangerous time. It is the time when the factions who have been at war vie for power, and when extremists try to make the most of the vacuum, to derail the peace and seize power. In the case of Rwanda, by the time the peacekeepers arrived it […]
‘The sand of the desert is sodden red,’ wrote the imperial poet Sir Henry Newbolt in ‘Vitai Lampada’ of a disastrous nineteenth-century military encounter in Egypt – Red with the wreck of a square that broke; The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead, And the regiment blind with dust and smoke. Half a century on, […]
It is baffling how Haig’s command is picked over, usually unsympathetically, and often by people with no understanding of what Clausewitz called ‘friction’ (that element in war which contrives to make simple things difficult), while the politicians’ handling of the long Edwardian prelude to August 1914 is set aside. It is as if Asquith and […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm