Albion Noise
Published 27 Dec 2015George Orwell: A Life in Pictures is a 2003 BBC Television docudrama telling the life story of the British author George Orwell. Chris Langham plays the part of Orwell. No surviving sound recordings or video of the real George Orwell have been found.
Awards:
International Emmy 2004 for Best Arts Programme
Grierson Award 2004 for Best Documentary on the Arts
Curious Droid
Published 28 Sep 2019Sounds like a bit of a bold claim that one engine helped change the course of WW2 but when you see the evidence it has a lot of validity but how did one little engine change the course of world events and become the engine that won the war?
I would like to thank David Irwin of Historic Aero Engines not only for the generous use of his footage but as in checking over the script and finished video for technical accuracy.
Historic Aero Engines display team :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtE_…Patreon https://www.patreon.com/curiousdroid
Paypal.me https://www.paypal.me/curiousdroidSponsored by
Craig Fleming, Florian Hesse, Peter BarberPresented by Paul Shillito
Written and Researched by Paul Shillito with assistance from David Irwin.
Images and Footage:
Historic Aero Engines, Rolls Royce, USAF, RAF, Boeing, Packard,
Joel TrickMusic From the Youtube library
“Magical Gravity” by Asher Fulero
“Saving the World” by Aaron Kenny
“Adrift” by ELPHNT
“Oceans, Rivers, Canyons” by ELPHNT
“The Story Unfolds” by Jingle Punks
Bob Oldfield
Published on 3 Nov 2011A Remembrance Day slideshow using Mark Knopfler’s wonderful “Remembrance Day” song from the album Get Lucky (2009). The early part of the song conveys many British images, but I have added some very Canadian images also which fit with many of the lyrics. The theme and message is universal… ‘we will remember them’.
A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:
Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 16 May, 1915 at Le Touret, age 25 For the curious, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission the Royal British Legion, and the Library and Archives Canada WW1 and WW2 records site provide search engines you can use to look up your family name. The RBL’s Every One Remembered site shows you everyone who died in the Great War in British or Empire service (Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and other Imperial countries). The CWGC site also includes those who died in the Second World War.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD Canadian Army Medical Corps (1872-1918)
Before WW1 the army was optimised primarily as a colonial police force, coupled with a small expeditionary force of regular soldiers intended to deploy to the continent to work alongside the French or other allies in the event of war. WW1 was an event that really constituted three armies – the small regular/territorial force of barely 300,000 soldiers that mobilised in 1914 and was wiped out to buy time. The interim force of Territorials and Reservists that held the line in 1915-1916 while the army reconstituted, and the civilian volunteer/conscript force from 1916 onwards that saw the army grow to over 4 million men by 1918.
Rapid demobilisation followed, followed by regeneration in the 1920s and 30s to become the most mechanised army in the world by 1939, comprising some 224,000 regulars. It is often forgotten that the British army of 1940 had many more tanks and vehicles than the German Army – history is not kind to the losers. The army in WW2 grew to a citizen force of roughly 3.5 million men, before shrinking post war.
The continuation of National Service, the war in Korea and the end of empire saw the army stay at roughly 330,000 soldiers for much of the 1950s, causing significant damage to the national economy due to the cost and lack of manpower for rebuilding. By 1957 the army estimated that its regular strength was roughly 80,000 personnel (only a quarter of the whole force), many of whom were tied up training two-year National Servicemen. A major factor in the 1957 Sandys Defence White Paper was the need to reduce manpower costs and free people up for other economically important tasks.
The Sandys Review led to a reduction to 165,000 troops most of whom were focused on either colonial policing actions (it is often forgotten that in the early 1960s there were over 100,000 UK service personnel in the Far East) or deployed in Germany as part of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). The withdrawal from empire saw the army shrink to a strength of approximately 150,000 by the 1980s, where its role was primarily to provide a corps of four divisions in Germany in the event of general war, supported by mobilisation units from the UK which would provide further divisions to augment BAOR and conduct home defence roles.
The end of the Cold War saw the first deployment of a divisional-sized force, with an armoured division sent to the Gulf in 1990 for Operation Desert Storm. This happened just as the Options for Change review cut BAOR and reduced the army to approximately 120,000. Further deployments to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s followed by the deployment of an armoured division to Iraq in 2003. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003-2014 saw the army struggle to sustain itself on two fronts without heavy support from the RN and RAF providing extra manpower and resources.
The 2010 SDSR initially preserved the army at just under 100,000 personnel, although later reviews cut this down to 82,000 regulars supported by a target of approximately 30,000 reservists working in a far more integrated manner. Today the army is struggling to sustain itself at 82,000, with recent manpower figures showing a total of roughly 78,000 troops.
Sir Humphrey, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like a Deployable Division?”, Thin Pinstriped Line, 2017-08-06.
World War Two
Published 9 Nov 2019The Battle of Britain is finished, but the war is far from over. New German plans are being made for the Balkans and Greece, where the Italian offensive is not as successful as planned.
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Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations: EastoryColorizations: Julius Jääskeläinen https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Thumbnail Colorization: Julius JääskeläinenEastory’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.Sources:
– Money and factory icons by Adrien Coquet, ship icon by Edward Boatman, all: from the Noun Project
– IWM: HU 1915, ZZZ 1811C, IND 3595, E 1227, E 1107, E 1242, E 1239
– San Demetrio crew by Arranj on Wikimedia Commons
– Narodowe Archiwum CyfroweA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
2 days ago (edited)
Now that the new Greek offensive has been launched a week ago, more troops are moving and more terrain is changing hands. We are very lucky to have Eastory make maps for our episodes, allowing us to visualize movements and geographicial locations. Furthermore, Eastory is a historian who is very skilled in researching the exact locations and movements of fighting units. For these episodes, he has had some help from our loyal community member Avalantis. This really shows how much this channel is a team effort and how important our community is to us and our videos. If you want to contribute as well, you can start with supporting us on https://www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or https://timeghost.tv. Every dollar counts!
Cheers, the TimeGhost team
The recent antics of Extinction Rebellion activists in London encouraged Theodore Dalrymple to do a bit of reading on the psychology of such cults and their followers:
Man is the only creature, as far as we know, that enjoys the contemplation of its own disappearance from the face of the earth. We find the prospect of our annihilation by disease, famine, war, asteroid, or climate change deeply satisfying. We feel, somehow, that we deserve it and that the world would be a better planet without us.
When to this strange source of satisfaction is conjoined a license to behave badly in the name of salvation from earthly perdition, we can expect a mass movement that approaches insanity. So it is with the Extinction Rebellion, whose fanatical members have brought chaos to London recently by blocking streets, occupying crossroads, gluing themselves to public buildings and railings, and standing atop underground trains, to the fury of thousands of rush-hour commuters who don’t want to save the world but only get to work.
In order to try to understand their state of mind, I recently read a book by three psychologists, Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, first published in 1956, called When Prophecy Fails. It recounts the reaction of a small doomsday sect in America founded by a housewife, who believed that most of North America was soon to be inundated by a great flood. When this failed to happen on the predicted date, members did not immediately conclude that the absurd grounds upon which their belief was based were false, but became even more convinced of their truth. When there is a contradiction between what we want to be the case and what is the case, our desire to believe often triumphs, at least for a time.
The beginning of the book gives a brief and selective history of sects that have predicted Man’s total annihilation in the near future, among them that of the Millerites in the 1840s in the United States. Reading the account of this sect, I could not help but think of the Extinction Rebellion that is now gripping London, to the growing fury of the rest of the population.
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 11 Sep 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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When World War Two began, Australia saw little threat of invasion from Germany (obviously), and sent a substantial number of firearms to Britain to help arm the Home Guard there, which was seriously concerned about the possibility of a German invasion. When Japan and Australia declared war in December 1941, the situation immediately became much more serious for Australia, and the government began looking for arms.
At the start of the war, there were effectively no submachine guns at all on the continent — just a couple examples. These included an MP38 somehow confiscated by Australian customs, which would take on a significant role. Australia looked to Britain for arms, and they were sent a technical data package to produce the Sten MkII — but found the design pretty underwhelming. Australian manufacturers decided to make their own improvements to it, using elements of the MP38 — specifically the sealed telescoping recoil spring system and underflowing stock. They also gave the gun a pair of pistol grips for improved handling.
The Owen SMG was going into production at this time, and had been in development for a while under private civilian supervision. The Australian Sten, called the Austen, lacked that developmental track record and it went into production without passing proper trials. It faced significant manufacturing delays and reliability problems, and was not well liked by troops — in contrast to the excellent Owen. The Austen was ultimately made in smaller numbers than the Owen (19,914 of the MkI guns) and pulled from combat use in August of 1944.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film this rare artifact! The NFC collection there — perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe — is available by appointment to researchers:
https://royalarmouries.org/research/n…
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754
History Matters
Published 1 Jan 2018Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tenminhistory
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4973164This episode covers the reign of King John and the problems he had securing the Angevin inheritance and the subsequent issues his barons posed. These problems culminated in the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 which severely limited the strength of John and his son, Henry III, whose reign was overshadowed by the document.
Ten Minute English and British History is a series of short, ten minute animated narrative documentaries that are designed as revision refreshers or simple introductions to a topic. Please note that these are not meant to be comprehensive and there’s a lot of stuff I couldn’t fit into the episodes that I would have liked to. Thank you for watching, though, it’s always appreciated.
Generalising further, one may say that the characteristic British diet is a simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous diet, drawing much of its virtue from the excellence of the local materials, and with its main emphasis on sugar and animal fats. It is the diet of a wet northern country where butter is plentiful and vegetable oils are scarce, where hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day, and where all the spices and some of the stronger-tasting herbs are exotic products. Garlic, for instance, is unknown in British cookery proper: on the other hand mint, which is completely neglected in some European countries, figures largely. In general, British people prefer sweet things to spicy things, and they combine sugar with meat in a way that is seldom seen elsewhere.
Finally, it must be remembered that in talking about “British cookery” one is referring to the characteristic native diet of the British Isles and not necessarily to the food that the average British citizen eats at this moment. Quite apart from the economic difference between the various blocks of the population, there is the stringent food rationing which has now been in operation for six years. In talking of British cookery, therefore, one is talking of the past or the future – of dishes that the British people now see somewhat rarely, but which they would gladly eat if they had the chance, and which they did eat fairly frequently up to 1939.
George Orwell, “British Cookery”, 1946. (Originally commissioned by the British Council, but refused by them and later published in abbreviated form.)
This piece is derived from a speech he gave on November 3rd at the Battle of Ideas festival in London:
One of my favourite political events this year was the Battle of Canning Town. This was the moment when Extinction Rebellion decided to send its painfully middle-class agitators to a working-class part of East London early in the morning to lecture and inconvenience people who just wanted to get to work. What could go wrong?
Quite a lot, it turned out. There were many wonderful moments. The two posh greens who climbed on top of a Tube train at Canning Town were mocked and eventually dragged down. A commuter can be heard branding one of the protesters a “ponytail weirdo”. Elsewhere on the Tube system that day, commuters pointed out that the London Underground is run on electricity and is therefore pretty eco-friendly. “Are you that fucking stupid?”, one asked a smug-looking couple of XR agitators. “No wonder you can’t get jobs …”
But the best moment came during the Battle of Canning Town, during that clash between working people and eco-elitists, when one of the commuters shouted at the protesters: “The world is not coming to an end!” I thought that was brilliant. This woman was just trying to get to her job and yet she found herself having to act as the voice of reason against the new hysteria. And she rose to the occasion wonderfully. She said what many of us know to be true: humankind does not face extinction.
The reason I admire the Battle of Canning Town is that it represented a potential turning point in modern green politics. It was really the first time in a long time that eco-hysteria was subjected to public judgement, to democratic rebuke, to the rational scepticism of the people. For far too long green ideology has been insulated from public challenge and public debate and this has allowed it to become increasingly eccentric and even unhinged. The Battle of Canning Town represented a reasoned, bottom-up pushback against the protected hysteria of modern environmentalism.
This is the thing I find most fascinating about Extinction Rebellion: its very name is a lie. Those two words themselves are untrue. Humankind does not face extinction, and all reasonable people know this. We know that there is nothing in the IPCC reports – which themselves are often over-the-top – to justify XR’s harebrained claims that we have 12 years to save the planet, and if we fail billions of people will die. They’ve just made this up.
As for the second word – “rebellion” – this is a lie, too. Extinction Rebellion is not a rebellion. Rather, its ideology and misanthropy are entirely in keeping with the outlook of mainstream politics and popular culture. From the educational sphere to Hollywood’s output, from the political elite to the worlds of advertising and publishing, the ahistorical, anti-human idea that mankind is destroying the planet and will be punished by Weather of Mass Destruction for having done so is entirely accepted, and increasingly unquestionable, in fact.
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 12 April 2014Here it is! The Scottish Play. The bloodiest of the bloody. An epic tale of magic, madness and stabbing. It’s so gory, even Tarantino thinks it’s over the top.
Making it funny was pretty tough. 😀
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 29 Aug 2019The Jameson Raid in December 1895 was one of the key events in the lead to the second Boer War. Leander Jameson took a force of about 600 men on December 1895 to make a surprise attach on Johannesburg, incite support for the multitude of British miners who felt oppressed by the Boer government, and ultimately bring in British forces to take over. The plan failed in a complete and public manner, though, as Boer forces knew about it from the very beginning. The raiding party was ambushed at Doornkop outside Johannesburg and forced to surrender. It was a tremendous public relations setback for supporters of British intervention.
In addition, the Boers captured a nice selection of very modern arms, including half a dozen artillery pieces, a dozen Maxim machine guns, and about 500 Lee rifles. This Lee-Speed is one of them, given to a Boer burgher who used it in the war that eventually broke out in 1899. He carved his name into the stock, as was common for the Boers. This is one of only two known and documented surviving rifles from the Jameson Raid, and it is both a very cool piece of history for that reason as well as a great time capsule of the Lee-Metford MkI pattern of rifle. Most of the early Lees in British military service were updated and repurposed over the decades, and finding them in original configuration is quite difficult today.
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Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 5 Nov 2019Watch an entirely avoidable succession crisis spill out over the course of a whole century.
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UK Defence Journal reported a few days back that the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier will take on her first active deployment in 2021, including a possible Freedom of Navigation exercise (FONOPS) in the South China Sea:
Aerial view of HMS Queen Elizabeth with Type 23 frigates HMS Iron Duke (centre) and HMS Sutherland (right) in June 2017 off the coast of Scotland.
Photo by MOD via Wikimedia Commons.
Commodore Michael Utley, Commander United Kingdom Carrier Strike Group, is reported by Save The Royal Navy here as saying that HMS Queen Elizabeth will be escorted by two Type 45 destroyers, two Type 23 frigates, a nuclear submarine, a Tide-class tanker and RFA Fort Victoria.
The ship will also carry 24 F-35B jets, including US Marine Corps aircraft, in addition to a number of helicopters.
Prior to the deployment, it is understood that the Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group will go through a work-up trial off the west Hebrides range sometime in early 2021.
When asked about whether or not the UK has enough escorts to do this without impacting other commitment, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:
The size and the scale of the escort depends on the deployments and the task that the carrier is involved in. If it is a NATO tasking in the north Atlantic, for example, you would expect an international contribution to those types of taskings, in the same way as we sometimes escort the French carrier or American carriers to make up that.
It is definitely our intention, though, that the carrier strike group will be able to be a wholly UK sovereign deployable group. Now, it is probably not necessary to do that every single time we do it, depending on the tasking, but we want to do that and test doing it. Once we have done that, depending on the deployment, of course, we will cut our cloth as required.
Gareth Corfield expands on this in The Register:
Although the initial plan was for Britain’s biggest ever warship to sail through the South China Sea, which China claims as its own territory in defiance of international laws and norms, and despite claims from at least six other countries including Vietnam and the Philippines, this detail was noticeably absent from the UKDJ report.
Over 200 islands, also subject to disputes between China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines, also lie in the area, which stretches across 3.5 million square kilometres and is visited by one-third of the world’s shipping traffic.
A US presence on the South China Sea deployment will be a useful political tool for the administration as a show of strength to China as well as asserting the right to freedom of navigation in the sea. In addition, it reinforces the idea that the UK supports US foreign policy – Queen Elizabeth is effectively replacing a US carrier on her Far Eastern tour as part of the superpower’s standing naval presence.
Of the jets aboard QE, around half will be supplied by the US Marine Corps, as has been reported for years.
The Dutch Navy will definitely join the deployment, most likely with a De Zeven Provinciën-class frigate – replacing one of the British Type 23 frigates in the mooted carrier battle group. Similarly, UKDJ reckons that an American destroyer will join the 2021 deployment (named Carrier Strike Group 21), freeing up a British Type 45 destroyer.
Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) underway in the Atlantic on 17 October 2019, participating in exercise “WESTLANT 19”. The first operational deployment for HMS Queen Elizabeth with No. 617 Squadron and a squadron of USMC Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightnings is planned for 2021.
Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nathan T. Beard, US Navy, via Wikimedia Commons
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