Simon Harley

It’s the 114th anniversary of the 114th meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence on 23 August 1911, one of the many stepping stones towards British involvement in a general European War. The minutes are transcribed at The Dreadnought Project. #history t.co/uNUV6MMWRQ

Finally gotten around to reinstalling Bluesky after my phone was stolen in London in June. Did I miss anything?

I’ve finally started cataloguing letters I’ve copied and hit 300 so far. Now I see why archives aren’t that keen on doing it. Going through one collection and it’s interesting to see how many letters had incomplete or obscured dates, and how many I’ve missed pages from. 😬

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the worst AI book cover yet.

Literary agents:

I just heard that the historian Jon Sumida passed away on 8 February. Ave atque vale.

Going through recent archival material …

It was copyrighted 1975. I didn’t see any other year mentioned.

Last night I found a 50 year old Rupert the Bear annual on the charity bookshelf at Barrow-in-Furness railway station. The content was a little raunchier than I remember.

I’ve never seen anything like it: extremely cool and unusual. I’ve looked through Thursby’s papers at the National Maritime Museum in the past so I was hoping for a little more evidence than the note, hence my asking.

Very interesting, but how is it known that it belonged to Thursby?

Rank Dishonesty Fitch wearing army uniform with naval cap and khaki cover. He wore the rank insignia of a major. Yesterday my attention was diverted to Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge and his service in Serbia durin…

In today’s blogpost, I go spare because a historian kept getting someone’s rank wrong. #history simonharley.com/2024/12/02/r...

This is the most batshit crazy aircraft listening ‘device’ I’ve ever seen. Venice, First World War. #history

a goofy cartoon character is making a funny face and says aww garshhhh ALT: a goofy cartoon character is making a funny face and says aww garshhhh

Nice to see I’m in the bibliography of N.A.M. Rodger’s new book.

A photograph of H.M.S. Argus, aircraft carrier.

On 26 October 1918 the Grand Fleet had 867 Royal Air Force personnel and 114 aircraft afloat. 56 aircraft were at shore stations attached to the fleet and 183 were under repair.

A social media platform is its people, so if everyone flooding here suddenly realise they were the problem all along …

I was talking to John a couple of weeks ago and he said British Battleships was written in 18 months. I believe it, but it’s still incredible.

“Show me your proposed DMZ.”
“OK.”
“WTF? I said show me your proposed DMZ.”
“I did. Everything in dark green.”

Checking in, but I’m still over at the dead bird place.

I spent too much time yesterday working out that Arthur Pollen (l) and William Goodenough (r) weren’t cousins as a few books claim but second cousins. They shared the same grandparents who died decades before they were born.

Heading to London to hit the Imperial War Museum and The National Archives. God help me.

Hey, big spender.

Telling Paul Kennedy “No historian is without sin” sounds worse than it actually was.