Brief update

Before plunging back into 1914 centenary activities I finally had an extended period of work back on Fairey, with a fair old chunk of chapter one now written – my man is just about to commence his premium apprenticeship at Jandus, a company in Holloway that manufactured arc lights under licence from America, with complementary training at Finsbury Technical College – of which more in a later blog.  When not chronicling CRF’s early life (helped by an illuminating conversation with Jane Tennant last Tuesday afternoon), I have contributed to a sixthform conference on the Great War and chaired a session at the impressive international conference organised by my colleague Professor Mark Cornwall: ‘Sarajevo 1914: Spark and Impact’ – scheduled to coincide with the exact centenary of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s fatal visit to Bosnia; and before that delivered my inaugural lecture on the soldier-poet, Keith Douglas – given on the seventieth anniversary of his death south of Bayeux on 9 June 1944.  The lecture spawned an article on Douglas in the New Statesman, and was recorded – for article or recording I suggest turning to Google as shameless self-promotion can only go so far.  All of these activities deserve more extended – and suitably scholarly – comment, but regrettably at this precise moment I don’t have the time.  Can a blog in itself constitute work-in-progress?