I was listening to a radio prog (yes, I'm old...) and they were talking about what music people would bring to a desert island (I think it was Classic FM). Finally they asked what 'special item' people would take with them. One guy said he'd bring a satellite phone - presumably to use after a few weeks/months when he was super chill but fancied a pizza.......

Just Finished Reading: Trial By Battle by David Piper (FP: 1959) [160pp] 

India, October 1941. 21-year-old Cadet officer Alan Mart is learning the ropes of command. Assigned under overbearing acting captain Sam Hall he can't seem to do anything right or satisfy a man who oscillates between being drunk, cynical or just plain self-destructive. Offered a cushy job teaching German to a bunch of commando-types he surprises himself by turning it down in favour of continuing to be abused by Hall. With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese attacks across the Far East, Mart finds himself leading a section of Indian soldiers in the jungles of Malaysia (with trucks painted in desert camouflage for their original assignment in the Middle East) against the Japanese onslaught. Initially unsure if he could be responsible for the death of another person – friendly or enemy – he quickly finds himself adapting to confusion, lack of sleep and random death. But that was before the full force of the Japanese advance falls on his section of the frontline. From then on there is only one reality – withdrawal, confusion and loss. 

I've been meaning to continue working through my small stack of Imperial War Museum Classics for a while now. I'm reading them (mostly) in narrative chronological order which makes sense to me. I've said before that my knowledge (and to be honest interest) in the Far East campaign is... limited. For some reason I'm for more focused on the conflict in Europe, Russia and North Africa that in the jungles of East Asia. So, it was 'nice (in an interesting way) to see things at ground level from the view of a young British officer thrown in at the deep end. I think that the biggest thing that struck me was that, despite being two years into the war, the British in India seemed both very laid back and VERY ill-prepared for any kind of attack. I suppose that they thought themselves well out of a European war (with the possibility of being assigned to North Africa still in mind) rather than anywhere closer – despite the fact that Japan and Germany where ALLIES! Which meant that, much like in England in 1939, soldiers and their equipment had to be hastily thrown together using whatever man and material came to hand. It was definitely a "learning on the job" mentality – which is often OK, expect where a single mistake (or just a spot of bad luck) could get you (and your men) killed. 

I did find the first half of the book (in India) rather slow and plodding but this may have been deliberate to emphasise the slow process of the British getting their act together. Once the action (or should I say chaos) moves to the jungle the pace certainly increases and the whole thing becomes more entertaining. Told very much from Alan Mart's PoV (and based on the authors wartime experiences) this was at times a visceral read that managed to get under my skin more than once. Looking forward I think I'll give that side of the war more attention in future. I think it deserves it. Reasonable.      

The Last 10 Books (I added to my Wish List) - September 2026 

Another month, another stack of books added to my Wish List. This month its mostly political (in part at least prompted by Stephen over @ Reading Freely plus a recent politics book I was impressed with) and technological with SO much talk these days about the dangers of AI and surveillance. When my musing goes existential my instinct is to look for (more) books. So.... 

The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter 

Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents by Robert Dallek 

All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror by Peter Bergen 

When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present by Nick Bryant 

Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs by Buddy Levy 

Age of Security: The Rise of a Global Obsession by Ruben Andersson 

The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore 

End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor 

Rivals in the Storm: How Lloyd George Seized Power, Won the War and Lost his Government by Damian Collins 

The Cancelled Prime Minister: The Extraordinary Rise and Tragic Fall of Ramsay MacDonald by Walter Reid 

Lots of easy/casual reading as usual! Politics might even start to edge out History as my main 'go to' subject. Maybe I can compromise by reading political history... [muses] 

Happy Birthday: Mary Du Caurroy Russell, Duchess of Bedford, DBE, ARRC, DStJ, FLS (née Tribe; 26 September 1865 – ca. 22 March 1937) was a British aviator and ornithologist. She was honoured for her work in founding hospitals and working in them during the First World War. She later financed and took part in record breaking flights to Karachi and Cape Town.

During the early 1900s she became one of the first Western women to study the Japanese martial art of jujutsu, and she was featured in a series of instructional photographs for the book "The Fine Art of Jujutsu" (1905), written by Emily Diana Watts.

A major area of organisation and work for the Duchess was in founding four hospitals in Woburn and in the grounds of Woburn Abbey. The principal establishment was the Abbey Hospital that she financed and built in 1914, and where she worked as a nurse and radiographer through to the 1930s.

She was a member of the Women's Tax Resistance League, a group associated with the Women's Social and Political Union that used tax resistance to protest the disenfranchisement of women during the British women's suffrage movement.

Late in life at age 63, the Duchess became interested in aviation, that she claimed gave her some relief from her constant tinnitus, although she eventually became totally deaf. In 1928 a large country house, Wispers, near Midhurst in West Sussex, and its estate were bought by the Bedford Estate for Russell. She used Wispers as a weekend retreat: she was a keen aviator and flew her plane from the family seat at Woburn Abbey to Wispers, where she had a hangar constructed in the 1930s at the same time as the large eastern wing was being added to the house. She used a nearby field as a landing strip.

On 2 August 1929, she departed on a record-breaking flight of 10,000 miles from Lympne Airport to Karachi (then in India) and return to Croydon Airport in eight days. She was accompanied in her single-engined Fokker F.VII (G-EBTS, Princess Xenia, which she renamed "The Spider" for its tenacity) by her personal pilot Captain C. D. Barnard and mechanic Robert (Bob) Little. On 8 April 1930 she made her first solo flight, in her DH.60G Moth (G-AAAO). On 10 April 1930 she embarked on a record-breaking flight from Lympne Airport to Cape Town, in "The Spider", flying 9,000 miles in 91 hours and twenty minutes over 10 days, again with Barnard and Little.

In 1934 and again in 1935, with co-pilot F/Lt R. C. Preston in de Havilland Puss Moth G-ABOC, the Duchess made extensive flights from Britain to the Western Sahara and Northern Nigeria.

The duchess died aged 71, in March 1937, three months before Amelia Earhart's death, after leaving Woburn Abbey in a DH.60GIII Moth Major (G-ACUR), that crashed into the North Sea off Great Yarmouth; her body was never recovered.

[Colour me IMPRESSED. What a fascinating life!]

There should be a half buried anvil near-by.... 

Just Finished Reading: Operation Biting – The 1942 Parachute Assault to Capture Hitler's Radar by Max Hastings (FP: 2024) [268pp] 

By the end of 1941 with the Battle of Britain won and the threat of invasion consigned to history Britain was looking for ways to strike back at the Axis Powers in Europe. Bomber Command was doing what it could with the aircraft it had available, but more needed to be done - especially as bomber losses, even at night, were increasing. Partially informed by a mixture of pride and arrogance it was long, too long, believed that either Germany did not use RADAR or that their technology was primitive in comparison to the British achievement. But the growing air losses, electronic signals from the Continent, ENIGMA traffic and strange reconnaissance photographs suggested otherwise. One location in particular intrigued the British war planners. It was an isolated facility in Normandy near the village of Bruneval. It looked ideal for an assault from the air, something the British armed forces had never tried before. On hearing of the idea Churchill, always up for an example of exotic warfare, agreed that it should be planned and executed as soon as possible, not only to show to the public that the British bulldog still had teeth but also to show the Americans that Britain was still very much in the fight. 

I'd heard of the famous Bruneval raid before but had never read anything much about it before. I think the thing that surprised me more than anything else reading this excellent study of the event was how much planning went into it and just how many people were involved. It was an early example of true combined arms warfare involving ground troops being dropped from the air – in hastily modified and totally unsuitable obsolete bombers - who fought a ground action and were later picked up by Naval forces from the French beach. Of course, being the first time anything like this had been attempted (and despite extensive if patchy training) the co-ordination between Services was... less than stellar. Not only were some of the paratroopers dropped FAR from their landing zones (a glider assault would have been a much better idea, but not suitable gliders had yet been built and tested) but the Navy failed to pick up any of the troop's signals when they needed rescue until some hours had passed. Only a fair amount of luck and a very lacklustre response from the local German forces prevented the operation becoming a failure. 

Unfortunately, despite the ultimate success of the mission, many of the wrong lessons had been learnt and, rather inevitably, a number of significantly upscaled missions followed – notably the attacks on Saint-Nazaire and catastrophically the assault on Dieppe [more on both missions later] provided little in the way of positive results but did result in very heavy casualties on the Allied side. The disaster of Dieppe did, fortunately, have an upside as it prompted the Allies to plan the later invasion of 'fortress Europe' to a much greater degree and provide it with overwhelming force to achieve its aims. This was a small unit action that has largely faded into the background of larger actions in WW2 which is a shame. Full of 'interesting' and 'exotic' characters in the British Special Forces (again something very new at the time) this was a valuable look at an operation that influenced many aspects of fighting later in the war. Definitely worth a read if this is in your scope of interest. Much more from the author to come. 

Yup.... Pretty much.... 

Just Finished Reading: American Sherlocks – Stories from the Golden Age of the American Detective edited by Nick Rennison (FP: 2021) [332pp] 

With the popularity of Sherlock Holmes both in his own country and across Europe, it should come as no surprise that he was both applauded and duplicated in the United States especially in the new media of daily newspapers and periodic magazines. This collection of 15 short stories dating from 1890 to 1920 shows off the range of results. 

As with all collections the quality of tale – both in its execution and narrative style – was variable. In fact, the first half of the book didn't impress me very much at all. Only when I reached the second half did I actually start enjoying the experience. I'm not sure if this was the result of stories improving or whether, as the moved deeper into the early 20th century, they simply became both more modern and more familiar.  

The first story, The Doomdorf Mystery by Melville Davisson Post (creator of 'Uncle Abner') was a locked room mystery that (unfortunately for my enjoyment) I solved instantly once a single 'off-hand' clue was provided. The 'mystery' rested on the readers (and a secondary character's) ignorance of basic physics that everyone these days should be familiar with – even if you haven't watched/read endless detective stories. 

Likewise other stories depended on the detectives 'sleight of hand' or rather dubious deductive reasoning. There was certainly very little in the way of forensic evidence or, rather surprisingly, police involvement at any point! Having read the previous non-fiction on early US crime scene forensics I now appreciate just why the police flayed about so much and built their cases on precious little actual evidence. My advice to criminals of that age – both fictional and real – was to claim they're innocent, go to trial and cause so much doubt about the prosecution case that they'd walk free more often than not. 

After the halfway mark things did get more interesting. One thing I did find surprising was the few female detectives. I think that the thing that struck me most strongly was that not only did they exist but that they were respected both inside the stories and by the reading public (who would've been predominantly male at that point I'm guessing. A case in point (pun not intended this time) was the amateur detective Elinor Frost in Christabel's Crystal (1905) that read very much like an English country house drama. More to my taste was professional female detective Clare Kendall in The Mystery of the Stolen Da Vinci by Arthur B Reeve (1913) where she uses all the technology of the period – the telephone, telegraph, fast cars and an intriguing recording device - to solve the crime. 

A few general observations are worth noting. Most of the crimes – not ALL murders! - seemed to take place in the upper echelons of society. I'm guessing that the 'mean streets' narratives of the 1930's – 1950's was a reaction to this. Very few of the stories involve the police at all – even once the crime or mystery is solved. Then there was the surprising number of suicides – by the caught criminal – sprinkled throughout the collection. I'm (very much) guessing that this was considered swift justice and cut out any messy court case – although handing the miscreant over to the authorities and either leaving it at that or adding a few lines on sentencing would have sufficed. Overall, this was worth the read if slightly disappointing. More Sherlock's to come. Reasonable.  

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide."

John Adams, 1814.

Happy Birthday: Emil Zátopek (19 September 1922 – 21 November 2000) was a Czech long-distance runner who won three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He came first in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres runs before he decided at the last minute to compete in the first marathon of his life, which he also won. Zátopek was nicknamed the "Czech Locomotive".

In 1954, Zátopek was the first runner to break the 29-minute barrier in the 10,000 metres. Three years earlier in 1951, he had broken the hour for running 20 km. He was considered one of the greatest runners of the 20th century and was also known for his brutally tough training methods. He popularised interval training after World War II.

Zátopek is the only person to win the 5,000 metres (24 July 1952), 10,000 metres (20 July 1952) and marathon (27 July 1952) in the same Olympic Games. In February 2013, the editors at Runner's World selected him as the greatest runner ever.

Just Finished Reading: American Sherlock – Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of Crime Scene Investigation by Kate Winkler Dawson (FP: 2020) [274pp] 

Whenever I read about criminal investigation in the 19th century (fictional or otherwise) I can't help but wonder how anything was actually solved before the advent of modern forensics. It would appear that the lack of CSI as well as the lack of understanding (or belief) by members of the jury lasted well into the early 20th century. However, one man (in the US) was determined to change that – Edward Oscar Heinrich. Starting as a pharmacist assistant and later chemist he was determined to bring scientific principles into criminal investigation as well as into the courtroom not only to prosecute the guilty but to ensure that the right people ended up in prison rather than someone who just happened to be the most obvious person in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

It wasn't long before Heinrich was asked for every time a local police force hit a problem. As his fame spread, he began attending incidents across the country – much to the dismay of his wife and children. Inevitably as he all too often identified suspects from the smallest items of physical evidence, he was just as often called to the stand to show the jury exactly what he found and to explain exactly why it was important. [I was actually shocked more than once at how contaminated the crime scenes of the era where – not only be the number of police officers at any particular scene but by the members of the public who wanted to see blood but also to take 'souvenirs' of the event. Most of the cases would fail these days because of the sheer amount of contamination of the crime scene.] The biggest frustration that Heinrich struggled with was the fact that juries often either didn't understand his evidence or simply dismissed it as fantasy or what we might call today 'technobabble'. But this was the age where fingerprinting was just coming into regular use and the concept of blood types had only just been recognised, so it's hardly surprising that even the police themselves were sceptical of any scientific explanation – most especially when it contradicted their own 'gut feelings' or prejudices. 

Scattered throughout with some of his most famous cases (only one of which I had previously heard of) this was an interesting look at the earliest days of modern forensic science and the uphill struggles its practitioners had both in solving crimes and convincing juries that their science could prove who actually did do it (and of course sometimes the 'science' was nothing of the sort). Although this was, primarily, a biography of the man himself I was a little disappointed that it didn't focus more of the science. I was also slightly irritated by the repeated mention of his financial worries and his rivalry with other 'experts' in forensics. But these niggles were generally a minor affair. Overall, an interesting look at the period – 1920's and 30's – and the crimes committed then. Reasonable and more Sherlock Holmes Adjacent (SHA) content to come.  

WOW.... Things are tougher out there than I thought..... 

INTERESTING! Especially having the German weather charts too...!

Just Finished Reading: I Don't Like Mondays – The True Story Behind America's First Modern School Shooting by N Leigh Hunt (FP: 2022/2026) [309pp] 

I don't remember the actual shooting when it happened on 29th January 1979. I don't even know if it was reported here. It probably was, being SO unusual at the time, but if it did then it didn't register. I only really remember knowing about it after the Boomtown Rats made her (apparently disputed) reason for the shooting into a hit song (below) – at least in the UK. It's also why I 'clocked' this book when I saw it in a local "we sell EVERYTHING shop'. 

The story is surprisingly simple. One morning 16-year-old Brenda Spencer told her father that she wasn't feeling well and would be taking a day off school. Shortly after her father left for work Brenda got her .22 rifle and, from her own front door, began firing across the street at her local Elementary school killing the Principle and Head Janitor and injuring 8 children all under ten. When she was finally arrested and was asked WHY she did what she did (a particularly unusual thing at the time but increasing common event today) she is supposed to have responded "I Don't Like Mondays" - which she later denied. 

Covering the shooting in detail (including extracts from the police dispatch and SWAT Team) before moving onto the arrest and fallout from the event this started out quite strong, but I slowly became a little bored as, despite the attention (and sometimes honestly over-attention) to detail, it didn't feel like there was a whole lot of SUBSTANCE here. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but I did feel more than once like I was making my way through a plot made of cotton candy. I think that a big part of that was the fact that Brenda never went to trial (having eventually pled guilty) and that we never got to the bottom of why she did it or what circumstances made her at such a young age into a person who could gun down little kids in the school yard. There was talk of abuse (both physical and psychological), a broken home, drugs, a history of petty theft and 'trouble making' but nothing substantial or of substance. It was more than a little frustrating. 

 I was definitely looking for much more analysis here, both of the event and the larger (post-1979/future) context but that was rather thin on the ground. Whilst not a 'bad' book I think this needed a little less focus on Brenda's jail time (and seemingly endless delusions of eventually going free) and more focus on the causes and impacts of school shootings. Reasonable and more on school shootings and other aspects of the 'Dark Side' of American history/culture to come.     

Well..... Actually Sarah (and friends) blew up the Headquarters and main Research hub of Cyberdyne Systems in California who were under contract to supply advanced computer chips to the US military for its Skynet Project.... So..... kinda close..... [lol]

My 10 Most Played Computer Games (according to Steam). 

I've been meaning to post something like this for a while now but wanted to wait until my latest gaming obsession made my Top 10 List. So, here they are... 

Borderlands 2 – 1,407.5 hours 

This is a 'cartoonish' FPS (First Person Shooter) with a WICKED/Twister sense of humour. A group of us played it to death (as you can tell) and it became one of our all-time favourite games that we still talk about. 

Warthunder - 1,325.4 hours 

I was VERY surprised by how much I liked this game. You have an option of playing Land, Air or Sea combat in vehicles against other players usually in teams of around 16 of so. The era of the vehicles goes from the 1920's up to present day (bunched together in rankings so you're not fighting grossly superior enemies. It was VERY frustrating at first but once I got the hang of things you can see how many hours I put in. I played Ground Arcade mode. 

Company of Heroes 2 - 1,205.5 hours 

Another game that I played endlessly with my main gaming partner. It's a WW2 small unit RTS (Real-Time strategy) game where you get together a bunch of tanks, infantry & other units and try to kill the enemy (we played against the AI) before they killed you. Lots of fun mayhem. 

Generation Zero – 993 hours 

Yet another FPS but with a fun twist. This takes place in 80's Sweden where you've been on holiday, and you're suddenly presented with an invasion of strange robots that are hunting humans. I was MOST impressed by the AI on this one where it really felt that they were HUNTING you! A very emotional and immersive game. 

Borderlands 3 - 857.8 hours  

Although this was an enjoyable fun game it didn't quite match the quality and originality of the early Borderlands games. Certainly quirky and hilarious it just didn't have the replay-ability of especially Borderlands 2. 

Oxygen Not Included – 804.4 hours 

This was a 'try something different' single player game that became quite the obsession for my gamer buddy & me. It's a weird survival game where you get to control the lives of a group of duplicate humans (called Dupes) INSIDE an exploded planet by resource mining and coping with a hostile environment. The trick is finding or producing enough oxygen to make it through the next day! 

Dawn of War – Retribution 655.5 hours 

I'm a HUGE fan of the Dawn of War franchise and we've played most of them until recently. One of the great things about THIS variant was the ability to play arena matches against AI opponents and we became VERY good at it. Part of the fun was 'pugging it' where me & my gamer mate would team up with a random person and fight to the end boss – whether the pug could handle the strain or not. We had some terrible teammates, but we had some great ones too. It just added to the fun. 

No Mans Sky – 585 hours 

Another strange one for me – essentially a galaxy wide explorer game where you hop from planet/system to planet/system mining, building, finding/buying cool ships and essentially doing whatever you felt like. It was multi-player, but the galaxy was SO big I think I only detected one or two other people ever – and immediately left the system...  

Divinity: Original Sin II - 501.2 hours 

A Fantasy RPG (Role Playing Game) with quests, mysteries and baddies to overcome. Mostly fun but could be VERY annoying at times. Although you could pick from a number of character types we did find that replay-ability was very limited. 

The Long Dark - 353.1 hours 

...and to my latest obsession! This is a walking survival game based in a post-apocalypse frozen Canada after some sort of geo-magnetic 'event'. Essentially, you're on your own (the next version is multi-player) against the environment (known as PvE) and in the mode I'm playing the only objective is to survive. So, you have to keep warm, keep hydrated and fed and don't do anything stupid like falling off a bridge, getting caught in a sudden blizzard or attacked by a wolf you've antagonised (or in my case a MOOSE!). There are no other people, not even NPCs (non-player characters) except a disembodied voice on the radio from time to time. I find it all VERY restful.  

Happy Birthday: James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete. He made history at the 1936 Olympic Games by winning four gold medals, setting individual Olympic records in each event, plus another as a member of the 400-meter relay. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes in track and field history.

Owens excelled in short sprints and the long jump and was lauded in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". Earlier he won four events, set five world records, and tied another—all in less than an hour, at the 1935 Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a feat that has never been equaled and was called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport". He won four NCAA titles in both 1935 and 1936, bringing his total to eight—an unparalleled achievement still unmatched.

He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black American man, was credited by ESPN with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy".

The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track & Field's accolade for the year's best track and field athlete. In a 1950 Associated Press poll, Owens was voted the greatest track and field athlete for the first half of the century. In 1999, he made the six-man short-list for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century. That same year, ESPN ranked him sixth-greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century and the highest-ranked in his sport.

Or sometimes we DID try it at home but no one blamed the cartoons. Either it was "kids being kids" or kids being stupid. So, we got told off, shouted at, told to wash off the muck or blood (not always our own) and, from time to time, got driven to A&E for stitches.... Or very occasionally fitted with a wrist cast... to show off to our mates in school on Monday...