OCTOBER UPDATE

SORRY to have been quiet for so long. A lot has been happening, and I shall review very quickly. July saw our Silver Wedding Anniversary. Joy would have liked to go to Mauritius but in line with the current Age of Austerity the Family Finances stretched as far as the Lake District. The Queens Head Hotel in Troutbeck is very highly recommended, and we enjoyed a circular walk around Ambleside and back over Wansfell Pike, with fantastic views the length of Lake Windermere.

As plans for my next book, the fourth Over the Battlefield, come together, I travel around gathering material and information. A trip to Shrewsbury to interview a former officer of the County of London Yeomanry (there's a clue!) permitted a brief march around the 1403 battlefield - it is well signposted with good paths.

Incidentally, if you would like a good book on British battles, including Shrewsbury, FREE!, just go to:

http://books.google.co.uk/books

and look for Brook, 'Fields of Battle'.

TARA: microfilm reader and monitors.

Next essential stage in the project was a long-awaited return to TARA - The Aerial Reconaissance Archives. No longer of course at Keele but residing at RCAHMS in Edinburgh. It's a long way from Cheshire, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to spend three full days trawling through sortie plots and extracting aerial images of various bits of the Normandy battlefields.


And now, one more long journey to yet another archive before I finalize my plans for the forthcoming volume. This time south, to Kew. Watch this space.

SMATS AFTER PADDY

Paddy Griffith's untimely death occurred before the planned start of the new season of his South Manchester Tactical Society. A number of us resolved to keep the tradition going as we felt Paddy would have wished, even though we would no longer be meeting in his front room. Indeed, with a large room available in the nearby Didsbury Hotel, we now have the opportunity to extend the invitation to attend SMATS to a wider audience.

852 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester, Greater Manchester M20 2SG

tel 0161 4455389

Ian giving the first talk of the 2010-11 season




All are welcome, and to celebrate, we now even have a website!



http://www.smats.org.uk/

RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE

One Sunday in late September found me back in Cambridge for a reunion lunch. For me, returning to Trinity College always feels like a homecoming. We had an address from the Master: Lord Rees of Ludlow, Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society. On the drive from Cheshire I had been listening (again!) to his 2010 Reith Lectures - absolutely fascinating words of wisdom about astrophysics and the future of mankind.

All freely downloadable at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/reith

By the way, for one of Ian's own contributions to the BBC, look at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7457795.stm






After the lunch I visited the Wren Library, where I sat my first-year college exams. On display there is the work of one of Martin Rees's predececcors: an original draft of Isaac Newton's 'Principia'. And nearby there's the no less impressive manuscript of that other classic: A A Milne's 'Winnie the Pooh'.