Booked!
We have been fortunate to receive some impressive titles to review over the past year and you’ll find all these in your growing Book and CD ROM Review area within SMN. We are always on the lookout for good titles to review, so any publishers out there reading these words do send through your new releases.
Having said this we often buy good reference materials and books that we think will compliment the builds we feature in SMN, but I want to go further – to extend coverage to include titles that are just great reads or significant in that they help all of us to get into the context of our projects – what it was like at the time… the political atmosphere and so on. I don’t know about you, but reading around my subject and finding and researching images, stories and gaining this insight is an important part of my enjoyment of this great hobby.
Such is the case with a book that was given to me last week by a friend and local resident who just happens to have been a previous Vulcan Display Flight pilot – Roger Dunsford. “I think you might like to read this Geoff?” he said and hands me a copy of: ‘Empire of the Clouds – When Britain’s Aircraft Ruled the World’ by James Hamilton-Paterson – what a great read it is. I will be reviewing it for you in your Book Review area very soon, but talk about a book to get you in the mood! Great between the wars stuff that sets about giving you a very personal insight into the start of the Jet Age and personalities – the Test pilots that took their lives in their hands to project Britain to the forefront of world military jet aviation. Bill Waterton, Neville Duke, John Derry and many more and all their extraordinary achievements along with many more genuine ‘heroes’. And then there’s the insane cancellation of the Miles M.52 that probably cost Britain any chance of staying at the forefront of supersonic flight.
Son more of these titles and you know, if you’ve had a good read recently or do so and want to drop me a line to alert others to it, just e-mail me with details. Please use the contact page in Contact top right of your red navigation bar above.
Plenty more to look forward to over the coming week with several builds drawing to a conclusion and many more starting up!
New-look Editorial
Changes coming to Geoff Here very soon. Francis is working on my new layout for this key comms area within SMN. It will look a lot like Finished Now – with the blue ‘accordion’ drop-down panels with titling and an opportunity to read the first part of each Editorial before opening the whole document up. Should be much more useful to go back and see the titles of previous editorials and content.
See you very soon…
Best wishes
Geoff
Geoff Coughlin, Editor SMN