CUK Book Club: Currently reading...

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Sackett Brand" by Louis L'Amour.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Nice easy read.

Next: "The Skyliners" by Louis L'Amour. Another oater.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The assault on liberty: wot went wrong with rights" by D. Raaaaaab. Purchased (feck nose why) 2nd March 2009.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. I "read" it more or less. Glad to see the end of it.

Next: "Unfinished Empire: the global expansion of Britain" by John Darwin. Guess wot that's about. Considering it's only been here since 17/1/2015 there's a remarkable collection of dust adhering thereto.

Looks like this is another one I'll read backwards: the Fall of Empire is more inneresting, along with the delusions afflicting The Great & The Good in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. .

By the 70s it was obvious to all that we were fecked & not in a good way.

Odd how in the mid 60s the septics were suddenly less keen on us pulling out of the far east and getting shot of our Pacific Fleet, what with them being a bit tied up fighting Victor Charlie at the time. .

Ah, the Black Hole of Calcutta and The Massacre at the Well of Cawnpore, this last features, IIRC, in one of the Flashman books where he ends up strapped to the muzzle of a cannon, as, indeed, did a lot of the mutineers, revenge being best served cold.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Unfinished Empire: the global expansion of Britain" by John Darwin. Guess wot that's about. Considering it's only been here since 17/1/2015 there's a remarkable collection of dust adhering thereto.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Seemed inneresting in places, but the reading it backwards might be an indicator otherwise.

Next: "The Atom Rush: man's quest for radioactive materials" by Harald Steinert. As translated from the original German text & published by The Scientific Book Club.

If it glows in the dark & it's not fish, then steer clear and don't keep a vial in your waistcoat pocket. .

Coffinite: Uranium silicate: an appropriate name for it.

Covers Uranium, Titanium, Cobalt, Nickel, Thorium, Niobium, Lithium, Zirconium, Hafnium.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Atom Rush: man's quest for radioactive materials" by Harald Steinert. As translated from the original German text & published by The Scientific Book Club.

Done: off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "The Automotive Nightmare" by Alistair Aird. From the days when petrol was 50p per gallon and had proper lead in it to stop the pinking. It looks back (from 1972) to the days of 1966 when petrol was 4/6d a gallon and 5* had lots of lead in it.

Ah, the concentric ring roads of that London, as planned in the 1960s by the GLC.

Oh. there were 4: I thought there were only 3.

Next bright idea by author: restrict maximum speed to 50 or 60 mph. .

Well it was 55 mph during one or other of the 1970s oil crises IIRC. I wonder if I've still got those petrol rationing booklets.

[Martin@AS Financial]

Just finished London Falling by Patrick Keefe which is a decent read.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Skyliners" by Louis L'Amour. Another oater.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Nice easy read.

Next: "Law of the desert born" by Louis L'Amour. A collection of oater short stories.

For some reason "Ride! you Tonto Raiders!" took a while to get through, maybe because it was the longest story in the book.

The Tonto Basin/Pleasant Valley feud was impressively bloody, with between 35 and 50 deaths in the feuding families over 10 years or so. Tom Horn may have been involved in the late 1880s.

Also Stein's Pass and Doubtful Canyon.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Automotive Nightmare" by Alistair Aird. From the days when petrol was 50p per gallon and had proper lead in it to stop the pinking. It looks back (from 1972) to the days of 1966 when petrol was 4/6d a gallon and 5* had lots of lead in it.

Done: off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "Atom Harvest" by Leonard Bertin. Another epic from The Scientific Book Club sometime around 1958 judging by the owner's name in the front cover. She lived in Clydach, around the corner from Martin's shop. Martin was my friend who died in 2024.

1955 apparently. Author worked for the Daily Torygraph.

Nah, must be later: a footnote refers to the 1957 "H bomb" tests.

Oh those wonderful reactor names:

BEPO. British Experimental Pile O.

GLEEP. Graphite Low Energy Experimental Pile.

DIMPLE. Deuterium In Moderated Pile of Low Energy

ZEPHYR. Zero Energy Fast Fission Reactor

PIPPA. Pressurised Pile Producing Power.

ZEUS. Zero Energy Uranium System

PLUTO. Along with DIDO: not an acronym. Materials testing fast.

Them were the days. . When we did stuff here.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Atom Harvest" by Leonard Bertin. Another epic from The Scientific Book Club sometime around 1958 judging by the owner's name in the front cover.

Done: off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "The Searchers" by Kenneth Macksey. Purchased 19th June 2004. Mostly about the Y Stations.

Mentions the Fuller Phone being used in WWI and WWII. Unlike the conventional trench telephone system it was very difficult to intercept & worked well even under extreme conditions.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "The Searchers" by Kenneth Macksey. Purchased 19th June 2004. Mostly about the Y Stations.

Done: off to Oxfam with it.

Next: "Empire of the Clouds: when Britain's aircraft ruled the world" by James Hamilton-Paterson. Purchase 16th October 2010.

Damn, that's the history of the terminally mismanaged decline of the British Aircraft Inductry (RIP).

Mentions of William "Bill" Waterton, test pilot and author.

Alan Pollock, the Hunter pilot who flew through Tower Bridge to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the RAF because the Government/MOD wouldn't do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker...ridge_incident

And many many dead test pilots who found the limits of ill designed aircraft from 1945 onwards.

Not to mention how the feck we managed to design and build 4 different atom bombers at the same time: Short SA4 Sperrin being one.

And Duncan Sandys, that genius who did so much to harm things (don't need fighter planes we'll do it all with missiles), most famous for having a polaroid photo of his cock in the Duchess of Argyll's mouth.

I still remember the roar of the Vulcans flying up the Neath valley to bomb the tulip out of Epynt back in the day, 60 years ago. .

There's still the remains of one up there even yet: crashed February 1966.

Avro Tudor: a passenger plane developed from the Lancaster, most notable achievement: killing Chadwick.

Avro 707. Avro 720.

Gloster Javelin, a plane so problematic it killed the company.

Saunders Roe SR177.

Supermarine Swift.

Miles M52. Cancelled. The third scale model reached Mach 1.38 on test. Details of the tail incorporated into the Bell X1.

Fireflash missile.

The National Gas Turbine Establishment: after some 50 years: a housing estate. Well we don't need that sort of thing any more, now do we?

Selling jet engines to the reds in 1946. You really couldn't make this one up. Someone must have been on drugs.

Septic terminally crap effort: Gruman xf10f-1 Jaguar (he calls it Falcon but there you go): first attempt at variable geometry that led to the F111 (which we were supposed to buy instead of TSR2 but didn't in the end thank feck: the Aussies planted a few in the desert IIRC).

Edgely EA7 Optica. Low speed observation thing that crashed in 1982 for unknown reasons.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Next: "Law of the desert born" by Louis L'Amour. A collection of oater short stories.

Done: off to Oxfam with it. Nice easy read, though the last story took its time. .

Next: "Passin' Through" by Louis L'Amour.