In terms of recent #GreatWar books, this is really good on the Central Powers at war. The chapters on Brest-Litovsk & the Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Ukrainians, bear eerie resemblance to our own times. The 1918 collapses begin with shortages of food & basically everything Image
Also strongly recommend @20committee book on the fall of the Habsburg Army ... especially if you were or are in a wintry lockdown that is redolent of Przemysl in 1914-1915. It was stocked by the @HGM_Wien on my last visit (one of the best museums anywhere). Prost! Image
This by @DrAEFox on the British Army as a learning army in the Great War was/is very interesting and breaks new ground Image
This by Major Gordon Corrigan is the best single volume refutation of every zombie story about the British Army in WW1 and esp the Blackadder/“lions led by donkeys” myths Image
While it is obviously not new, i very much enjoyed reading and was influenced by Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s history of the Great War (which war BLH fought in) Image
While also not new, Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s two volume biography of Marshal Foch, for whom I have a very high regard, is also excellent and captures the uncertain days of 1917-1918 when the war’s end was in the balance. I own the Penguin editions which are worn now Image

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More from @GrayConnolly

Nov 15
Imagine everyone should 'calm their farms' and await the hopefully transparent investigation before jumping to WW3 (RUS missiles & UKR defence munitions will both kill you). Find the casings & examine their markings. Nothing can be taken on trust here.
Not saying this is true - that it was a Ukrainian s300 - but this is an example of why you wait for the evidence to be examined rather than rush to promote insane WW3 casus belli or trust “anonymous US intelligence official”
TL/DR - please demand more of your media. Your world may very well depend on it given how insane media jingoism has been here
Read 4 tweets
Nov 13
Apropos a few debates here: if you grew up in Gen X/Y, you were old enough to know World War II generation members & to have your working world shaped by Boomers. You noted the modestly heroic WW2 built everything useful while the Boomers have been little more than locusts tbqh
The WW2 generation had their war preceded by the Depression and grew up in the shadow of whoever survived WW1. The Boomers by contrast came of age in regulated welfare states with full employment and societal guardrails, not all perfect but aimed at most doing mostly better.
Boomers really start coming to power in the 1980s and 1990s … with it came the 1960s/1970s for deregulation and removing rules - not just in work/financial services but family obligations, marriage, “finding themselves” etc no matter who esp children got hurt. “Aged care” begins
Read 6 tweets
Nov 12
If you were born in 1900 in the UK - such as Mountbatten - by the time you turned 50 you had been through
- the Great War and the collapse of almost every other major European empire and monarchy
- the worst Depression since the 1890s if not ever
- all six years of World War II
The British documentary series that Lord Mountbatten narrates on his life & times is fascinating - his recollection of his Russian relatives, the Romanovs, and his feelings, even in the 1970s, for the Grand Duchess Maria he hoped to marry, is moving

The future King George VI was born in 1895 and as "the spare", as a 20 year old Midshipman, served at the battle of Jutland as a turret officer in the dreadnought HMS Collingwood, where, he was Mentioned In Dispatches
Read 4 tweets
Nov 10
It is Armistice Day tomorrow - in 1918, at the 11th Hour, of the 11th Day, of the 11th Month, the guns fell silent ... good wishes to all who are commemorating #RemembranceDay Image
Good morning all on this Armistice Day/ #RemembranceDay , the 104th anniversary of the Great War's end. Australia's Great War (1914-1919):
- national population of 5m
- 416,809 enlisted
- more than 60,000 killed in action
- 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner Image
My grandfather in Aug 1918 with his beloved sister Vera before going to France. My late grandfather would arrive for the Allied advance to the Nov 11 armistice. Like many, he would feel guilty for having survived. So many friends killed & wounded in the Great War. #RemembranceDay Image
Read 13 tweets
Oct 28
The Twitter management fired by Musk had it coming. Musk's idea of the platform as a neutral public square could always have been implemented but there was a determined desire by the now departed team to meddle. That journos are now ignored/not boosted is hardly the world's end.
Everyone who is on Twitter complains about Twitter -perhaps whining is an essence of the human condition - but I actually find it very useful for first reports of breaking news as well as my own public filing cabinet for what I find interesting. People can follow/unfollow idc
I will also say that if you use twitter in good faith & are not a complete mutant (albeit all of us will err at times) then you can meet and debate interesting people. I have never understood having an anonymous account to go mad - life is short & seems a waste of precious time.
Read 7 tweets
Oct 20
I have had a few people send me this @MarginalRevolt post by @tylercowen on Classical Liberals vs the New Right (also saw @clairlemon post on it). I found it quite interesting. Am not a philosopher but will add some dissenting observations below here.

marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
The piece is written with an American audience in mind, and, while the American caste system requires everything to be neurotically related to recent times & esp the Trump years, because of the desultory effect of US politics, this has spread to my inbox ... hence this ....
I think the post is good in setting out both sides of the liberal/Tory divide (which is essentially what the divide is). Americans may not use Whig/Tory terminology but that essentially is what it is. If you speak English you have been (re)fighting this same war for centuries.
Read 13 tweets

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