This genre of literature rose to prominence at a time when attitudes regarding Britain’s friends and potential enemies were changing. While France had traditionally been seen as Britain’s enemy there was a new potential threat from the newly formed German nation.
The following extracts of parliamentary business are taken from Hansard and other public records. [Extracts contain Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.] House Commons Debate, 14th May 1901. ARMY ORGANISATION Sir John Colomb: I hope the House will appreciate the difficulty in which this ruling of the …
Charles Lowe (1910) About German Spies – Contemporary Review, January 1910, pp.46-47 Journalist Charles Lowe wrote in 1910: “Among all the causes contributing to the continuance of a state of bad blood between England and Germany perhaps the most potent is the baneful industry of those unscrupulous writers who are …
Margaret Tait Flaws (2009) Spy Fever: The Post Office Affair At the beginning of the First World War, stories of spies abounded throughout the British Isles. It was in this atmosphere that the entire staff of the Lerwick Post Office was marched off to prison and incarcerated for almost a …
The first use of aeroplanes for reconnaissance and bombing occurred in the Italian-Turkish war in 1911. On October 23, 1911, an Italian pilot, Captain Carlo Piazza, flew over Turkish lines on the world’s first aerial reconnaissance mission, and on November 1, the first ever aerial bomb was dropped by Sottotenente …
Arthur Conan Doyle (1913) Great Britain and the Next War – published in Fortnightly Review, February 1913. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the few major authors of the time who clearly foresaw the impending dangers. Now known mainly for his Sherlock Holmes stories, he was also an expert …
The Fenian Ram was an early submarine developed by John Holland in the United States for the Fenian Brotherhood foe use by the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Description from Wikipedia: Fenian Ram is a submarine designed by John Philip Holland for use by the Fenian Brotherhood, American counterpart to the Irish …
In October 1904 the Russian Navy attacked a fleet of British trawlers. The Dogger Bank incident (also known as the North Sea Incident, the Russian Outrage or the Incident of Hull) occurred on the night of 21/22 October 1904, when the Russian Baltic Fleet mistook some British trawlers in the …
Samuel Hynes (1969) Edwardian Turn of Mind: First World War and English Culture The Edwardian Turn of Mind brilliantly evokes the cultural temper of an age. The years between the death of Queen Victoria and the outbreak of the First World War witnessed a turbulent and dramatic struggle between the …
Richard Freeman (2009) The Great Edwardian Naval Feud: Beresford’s Vendetta Against ‘Jackie’ Fisher Interesting background to the period when Britain was building up its naval capabilities. This is the story of the clash between two gigantic personalities in the early years of the twentieth century. On one side was Admiral …
G.G. Rupert (1911) The Yellow Peril Rupert was influential in the development of the idea of the Yellow Peril, the theory that East Asians (the “yellow races”) were a present and future threat to the west. These views were published in The Yellow Peril, or the Orient vs. the Occident …
Literature of Invasion through a channel tunnel: Channel Tunnel scares Channel tunnel: centuries of planning [Source: The National Archive – Treasures from The National Archives http://apps.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/item.asp?item_id=40&sequence=1] These plans are for a channel tunnel railway link between Calais and Dover. They were created more than 100 years before the channel tunnel was …