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Alex Deane

@ajcdeane

Apr 29

Britain’s Jews need allies, perhaps as never before.

I think they also need people who are not Jewish to say where they stand on this profound cultural problem as we stand together at the edge of the precipice.

I stand with them. I stand with Britain’s Jews.

The sustained attack we currently witness is against Jews. But it isn’t solely against Jews. It’s against our entire way of life.

Jewish people, as so often in history, are merely first in hate’s line of fire.

Can it possibly be that we are going to stand passively by as our vanishingly small population of Jews are forced out of British life?

Some - who talk otherwise a great deal about multiculturalism and tolerance - would have it so, I’m afraid.

Read 6 tweets

Alex Deane

@ajcdeane

Feb 2, 2024

#Deanehistory 210, hat tip @WillardFoxton.

Pilots are a funny breed.

In early 1914, having learned to fly only because doctor’s orders stopped him working on the family farm after a sheep kicked him in the ribs, Louis Strange joined the “Upside Down” club, for a feat

too obvious to spell out but must have been hairy in an open cockpit.

His innovative streak continued in the war that soon broke out, building petrol bombs with his pals and dropping the homemade explosives from the cockpit by hand to good effect.

In a similar vein, to enable the dropping of larger munitions he invented a chute in the floor of the plane so that payloads could be delivered without physically leaning out of the cockpit.

Keen to go yet further, he invented

Read 27 tweets

Alex Deane

@ajcdeane

Jun 19, 2023

#Deanehistory 202.

It is often said with some force that the only good Nazi is a Grammar Nazi. Those guilty of grammatical errors and typographical solecisms, especially online, may seem – and this will shock you – ungrateful when their mistake is pointed out,

@BlueEarthMngmnt

but plainly providing such helpful feedback is God’s work.

Thus it is with a divided mind that your correspondent relays the story of The Good Typo. For which, hat tip @BlueEarthMngmnt.

When the Second World War broke out, British boffins (why should the tabloid media be the only ones to use the term?) began the process of building a codebreaking team at Bletchley Park. Whilst well documented in some ways, their work has been somewhat challenging for historians

Read 15 tweets

Alex Deane

@ajcdeane

Mar 25, 2023

@CoriniumMuseum

#Deanehistory 193 h/t @CoriniumMuseum. The Battle of Caudine Forks.

The Samnites were old rivals of Rome, and did pretty well for a while before they went the way of the rest of Rome’s enemies for the centuries of their pomp - defeat, assimilation, obliteration.

This is a story of their success, which was also their failure - with not one but two lessons.

The Samnites were commanded in 321 BC by Gaius Pontius, who learned that the Roman army in the field against him was presently to be found at Calatia.

He had ten of his men disguised as local herdsmen who, approaching the Romans separately by varying routes at different times, all told them the same thing - that the Samnites were busy laying siege to the town of Lucera.

Read 13 tweets

Alex Deane

@ajcdeane

Dec 27, 2022

https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867

I hesitated - but not for long - before flagging this important thread, given the hostility around this topic.

The point is that when those in power suppress free speech, they never do so saying “we are suppressing free speech.”

1/5

https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867

They say something along the lines of… we are ensuring that dangerous misinformation isn’t spread. You wouldn’t want that, would you?

There are two main issues.

First, in a robust democracy society should be able to bear misinformation, rebutting it not suppressing it

2/5

(Which after all lends it an alluring patina of the illicit, the underground);

Secondly, it’s so hard to determine what is misinformation & what is legitimate disseminating information or perspectives that happen to disagree with those prevailing amongst the decisionmakers.

3/5

Read 5 tweets

Alex Deane

@ajcdeane

Aug 15, 2022

#Deanehistory 163.

Philip Wareing was 25 years old when his Spitfire exploded.
Flying out of Kenley Aerodrome, at that time in August 1940 mostly a smoking ruin at which the pilots slept under the wings of their planes,

Sergeant Wareing was one of seven British airmen engaging thirty German ME109s in the air over the Channel and – as the combat drifted southwards – above Calais.

He’d shot one German fighter down when, in his words, his “lovely Spitfire was riddled like a sieve.” Hit by flak from the ground as well as by enemy planes, on fire, his propeller having failed, his radiator taken out of action,

Read 22 tweets

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