Quotulatiousness

April 28, 2021

The Royals at War – WW2 Special

Filed under: Britain, History, Italy, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 27 Apr 2021

From inspiring their subjects to plotting international strategy, the world’s monarchies still have a crucial role to play in their country’s war effort during the Second World War. As you’ll find out, some sovereigns are much more successful at this than others.

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Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Astrid Deinhard
Written by: Fiona Rachel Fischer
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Fiona Rachel Fischer
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory​)

Colorizations by:
– Daniel Weiss
– Mikołaj Uchman
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/​
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/​
– Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man

Sources:
– National Archives NARA
– National Portrait Gallery
– FDR Presidential Library & Museum
– Imperial War Museums: HU 55966, H 1971,
– Girl Guides of Canada
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– Australian War Memorial: AWM 4067471

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
– “Other Sides of Glory” – Fabien Tell
– “London” – Howard Harper-Barnes
– “Break Free” – Fabien Tell
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell
– “Weapon of Choice” – Fabien Tel
– “Please Hear Me Out” – Philip Ayers
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen
– “Dragon King” – Jo Wandrini
– “Remembrance” – Fabien Tell
– “Ominous” – Philip Ayers

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com​.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
1 day ago (edited)
With recent events surrounding the death of Prince Phillip, the British Royal Family has been front-and-center of the worldwide news cycle as of late. In 2021, it is rare for the royals to be at the center of people’s lives, but this wasn’t the case in the days of World War Two. Even though the age of kingdoms was largely over when war came around, sovereigns still had a role to play in their country’s war effort all over the world.

In this episode, we are taking a closer look at the role royalty played during the war. Is there still a monarchy where you live and if so, what is your experience with it? We would love to hear about that in the comments!

How Does it Work: Short Recoil Operation

Filed under: History, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Jan 2021

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Correction: Browning invented the pistol slide, but not the overall short recoil system. Maxim was the first to successfully create a short recoil firearm.

Short recoil is the most common system used today in self-loading handguns, and it also used to be fairly popular in machine gun designs. The basic principle is that the bolt and barrel (in a handgun, slide and barrel) are locked together for an initial travel substantially less than the overall length of the cartridge. After typically a few millimeters of travel, the barrel stops and the bolt or slide is able to continue rearward to extract and eject the empty case. Short recoil can be paired with virtually any locking system, but today the Browning tilting barrel system is most common.

Short recoil has never been popular in shoulder rifle, as the reduction in mechanical accuracy from the moving barrel can be undesirable. In handguns and machine guns, this accuracy reduction is generally below the threshold of relevance.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

QotD: George Orwell’s other novels

Filed under: Books, Britain, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[Orwell’s] major work remains canonical, and cited on a daily basis in virtually every context imaginable, appropriately or otherwise. It seems unlikely that virtually any well-read man or woman is a stranger to his two most famous novels, which have established him, even seven decades after his death, as one of the bestselling writers in the English language. But once-popular works such as The Road to Wigan Pier are now in danger of falling into obsolescence, as the social circumstances that Orwell describes seem less and less relevant to a 21st-century readership, and even his great work of Spanish Civil War reportage Homage to Catalonia might be dismissed as a period piece, written with undeniable fire and conviction but saying little to a contemporary audience.

This would be a harsh and rather glib judgement, but many writers have faced worse. The book that suggested Wigan Pier, JB Priestley’s English Journey, was once hugely influential, even being credited with winning Labour the 1945 election, and is now regarded as a quaint piece of social commentary. That Priestley conducted his travels from a chauffeur-driven car, while Orwell willingly subjected himself to filthy evenings in slum bed and breakfasts and hostels, is a telling distinction between the two writers and their approaches: it is also undeniably true that Priestley died at 89, a grand old man of letters, and that Orwell’s premature death was one brought on by the tuberculosis that had affected him for years before his death. Yet Priestley is now remembered mainly for An Inspector Calls, and Orwell remains an iconic figure, beloved by millions. His canonisation was made explicit by a statue of him by Martin Jennings being erected outside Broadcasting House in 2017, complete with the phrase “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

Yet it is doubtful that many of his admirers have read his earlier novels, namely Burmese Days, A Clergyman’s Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Coming Up For Air. All four were brought out by the left-wing publisher Victor Gollancz, between 1934 and 1939, and each of them is autobiographical in nature. Burmese Days draws on Orwell’s faintly unlikely time in Burma in the Twenties with the Indian Imperial Police, and A Clergyman’s Daughter uses both his life with his family in Southwold (which appears faintly disguised in the novel as “Knype Hill”) and his days tramping for its narrative. Keep the Aspidistra Flying finds Orwell mining his experiences in the lower reaches of the London literary scene, including his time working in a bookshop in Hampstead, and Coming Up For Air, written while Orwell was recuperating in Marrakesh, is suffused with an intense nostalgia for an England that may never have really existed, but is of a piece with the fascination, and repulsion, for the tenets of “Englishness” that Orwell wrote about over and over again in his essays and reportage.

Alexander Larman, “The lesser-known Orwell: are his novels deserving of reappraisal?”, The Critic, 2021-01-07.

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