It’s easy to view the events of the two World Wars with the benefit of hindsight. For some people, removed from the events by at least half a century, everything seems to lead to an inevitable win by the Allies. A triumphant win by good over evil if you will.
The Experiences of an English Soldier certainly brought the events of ninety years ago back to life for a lot of people. The life of Private Harry Lamin was revealed to us through his intermittent letters home to his family, 90 years to the day after they were written. The gaps kept everyone guessing about his fate; hoping that he would survive the war and make it home safely.
The UK National Archive (@ukwarcabinet [^]) is following in that tradition, posting tweets from the Cabinet Papers day by day 70 years on from the original events. For anyone who wants more there are links in the tweets back to the original papers.
We have just been through the Battle and Evacuation of Dunkirk [^]. Mr Winston Churchill has just made a speech [^]: “We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”. Plans are being made for the defence of England against the anticipated Nazi invasion, and the Battle of Britain [^] is just a month in the future.
The immediacy of watching the events as they are revealed in real-time show how delicately balanced the two sides were. So, after almost two years on Twitter [^] I have finally found a use for it – to keep up to date with the events of seventy years ago!
[…] seems that there is now another reason to be on twitter besides the UK War Cabinet. A London blogger, IanVisits [^], is going to twitter Bram Stoker’s Dracula in as close to […]