Tom Isitt

😂

Small satellite communicator for summoning help when you fall off a mountain.

That weird thing of getting an expensive electronic gadget and hoping you’ll never have to use it. See also: avalanche probe, snow shovel, and EPIRB.

Absolutely not. Summarising a thread of 200 opinions doesn’t produce information, it produces an overview of what some people think, and can’t evaluate the legitimacy of those opinions. Plus, there are ethical issues that come with AI use.

Stig of The Dump gave me a lifelong interest in prehistory, and introduced me to the idea that time may not be linear.

I owe my kids an apology. Instead of encouraging them to be doctors and teachers, I should have steered them towards sports governance, where they could accept high-value gifts, go on expenses-paid junkets, take bribes, stay in 5 star hotels, and do around 15 hours actual work per week.

Not the Western Front Conference 2026 Following last years great conference will take place on Saturday 31st October in Wakefield West Yorkshire just of the M1. Tickets cost £29 including lunch.with 4 great speakers. www.trybooking.com/uk/FPHV

Congratulations!

My in-laws live in Budleigh, so I’m very familiar with that landscape, and the walk up to Otterton mill.

A lovely walk, indeed (and a lovely painting too)

Left to right: teenager, child, dad, mum

Family groups of standing stones

#TBT That time I wrote an article about the anthropomorphic menhirs on Corsica. I do love standing stones, particularly “family groups”.

A very rude Scottish comedian

After reading a passage from my forthcoming book, my wife turned to me and said:
“You really are the Frankie Boyle of military history, aren’t you.”

Should I…
a) be mortified
b) be embarrassed
c) be secretly pleased
d) use it as a quote on the cover

Raibl is the small town at the other end of the tunnel.

They turned it into the rifugio you can see on the saddle

A view from Passo delle Selle today

Stupid old fool climbing up to the Castellaccio

Rusty barbed wire on mountain side

Walking the ground, Presena sector, WW1 (it’s what Richard Holmes would have wanted). There’s a lot of barbed wire still up there.

Once the book has been scraped by an LLM, it will become the truth 👌

Records, coffee machines, whatevs 🙄

Library book that no one wanted to read

Every author’s worst nightmare…a book withdrawn from a library without anyone having read it. Not one of mine, I hasten to add.

£12k give or take

Lovely red and white Italian motorcycle

#TBT Playing with a Bimota DB2, back in the early ’90s. It was a lovely (and very expensive) little thing.

I like to think that I can see both sides of the story, but you’re probably right.

Emma, after watching yet another programme about railways: “They really changed the world, didn’t they.”
Me: “Absolutely, they enabled the spread of epidemics, made the Holocaust possible, and facilitated the exploitation of the Third World.”
Emma: “WTF is wrong with you??”
😶

Coming soon…
Eight Reasons Your Bike Hates You!
Do Energy Gels Make Your Balls Explode?
Why Haven’t You Bought a Gravel Bike Yet, Loser?
Etc etc

Thank you, I’ll take a look.

Indeed, and it’s very interesting (I read what I assume is the Slovenian version). I’m surprised how little attention this aspect of the war gets.

Indeed not! It was the product of a unique set of circumstances, but advanced medical knowledge immeasurably.

Volunteer in starvation experiment being tested

List of physiological effects of prolonged PEM

The Biology of Human Starvation, by Ancel Keys (the man who invented the K ration)

History says the Austro-Hungarian army was starving in 1918, but what does that actually mean? What was the effect of starvation on frontline soldiers? The Minnesota Experiment gives some answers, but few historians have attempted to analyse the effects of starvation. So I’m doing some science…

Typical pearl-clutching. Heaven forbid that we have a reasoned discussion, using actual evidence. Still, clickerty-click, churn churn churn.

Oxen pulling military wagons

Oxen pulling Serbian artillery

We have WW1 memorials for war horses, dogs, mules, even pigeons. But where are the ones for the oxen, eh? They are the perfect draught animal — strong, hardy, and when you’re done with them, they’re much more tasty than your average mule.