Richard Griffiths. What Did You Do During the War? The Last Throes of the British Pro-Nazi Right, 1940-45. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017. Billed as a sequel to Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-9 (1983), which is one of my favourite history books. It is indeed pretty much a 'what did they do next?' for many of that book's shady characters. Unfortunately Griffiths doesn't seem to be as interested in the links between aviation/aviators and fascism as he was in Fellow Travellers; there's a chapter on the Master of Sempill, and people like A. V. Roe pop up here and there, but not much else. A chapter on the fascist infiltration of the peace movement doesn't seem to have much to say about the Duke of Bedford's involvement in the Bombing Restriction Committee. Still, looks like lots of fun.

Peter J. Beck. The War of the Worlds: From H. G. Wells to Orson Welles, Jeff Wayne, Steven Spielberg and Beyond. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. A history of the novel, its context and its influence, mixing in biography, literary and film (and radio) criticism as well. Takes in everything from the London Necropolis to The Battle of Dorking to the (supposed) panics caused by various radio adaptations.

Robin Archer, Joy Damousi, Murray Goot and Sean Scalmer, eds. The Conscription Conflict and the Great War. Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2016. A solid set of essays covering the Australian conscription debate from its political and philosophical origins to the way it has been remembered. The selling point for me was the comparative section, with one chapter by John Connor asking why conscription was a harder sell in some English-speaking countries than in others, and another by Ross McKibbin more closely comparing the issue in Britain and in Australia.

Lloyd Clark. Blitzkrieg: Myth, Reality and Hitler's Lightning War - France, 1940. London: Atlantic Books, 2016. Argues that the role of armour and airpower in the Fall of France has been exaggerated and that infantry was key (though it still can't avoid having that diving Stuka on the cover). More of a military history than Julian Jackson's excellent The Fall of France (2004), while similarly suggesting that a German victory was by no means inevitable.

Airminded has been very quiet lately, as I was working to a deadline (thankfully met). I didn't even have time to note the books I've been buying, so here they are.

Bourke, Joanna. Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play Invades Our Lives. London: Virago, 2014. The argument is there in the title, the persuasion will be in the detail. Interesting to me for the connections between play, simulation and aerial theatre. Note that Bourke is the incoming Global Innovation Chair in the Centre for the History of Violence just down the road.

Boyce, Dean. Invasion of Sydney: Fears and Counter-measures of an Isolated Colony. Ultimo: Halstead Press, 2015. A history of the various invasion scares, mostly Russian, endured by Sydney in the 19th century (sadly, not the 20th century). The scaremongering effect of simulated naval battles and landings is a surprising and fascinating theme.

Hamilton-Paterson, James. Marked for Death: The First War in the Air. New York and London: Pegasus Books, 2016. Review copy (not for Airminded). Hamilton-Paterson's Empire of the Clouds was a great evocation of postwar British aviation. Here he is tackling a larger topic in a more systematic way. A new history of the First World War in the air would be welcome -- John Morrow's is nearly a quarter of a century old now -- so we'll see if this is it.

Parker, Nigel J. Gott Strafe England: The German Air Assault against Great Britain 1914-1918. 2 volumes. Solihull: Helion & Company, 2016. And sometimes classics are surpassed. I think this will become my new go-to work for the German air raids on Britain in the First World War, replacing Cole and Cheesman's The Air Defence of Great Britain (more than three decades old), though that may still have the edge for air operations, as opposed to the effects on the ground, and some more analysis would have been nice. But it's very comprehensive and well-referenced.

Patrick, Chris and Baister, Stephen. William Le Queux, Master of Mystery. Purley: self-published, 2007. Perhaps surprisingly, the only full-length biography of Le Queux available. A bit patchy, but has some valuable information.

Rid, Thomas. Rise of the Machines: The Lost History of Cybernetics. Brunswick and London: Scribe, 2016. Would you believe that the cyber age began with the attempt to solve the air defence problem? I would! Though that is, of course, just part of the story.

Schneer, Jonathan. Ministers at War: Winston Churchill and His War Cabinet. London: OneWorld, 2015. Some time ago Schneer wrote a book called London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis, which I liked very much. A rather different topic here but a useful one (even if it does mean adding to my library another book with 'Churchill' in the title).