newbooksnetwork.com/history-of-fireworks-from-their-origins-to-the-present-day
Saturday 12 October 2024
A History of Fireworks: my interview on New Books Network
Friday 13 September 2024
Denmark Place: London's forgotten fire that killed 37 people
In 1980, the area in London's Charing Cross Road near the junction with Oxford Street where the new Tottenham Court Road station stands, was a hotbed of unlicensed drinking clubs. The police were always closing them down, but they always seemed to open up again under new management.
On Monday 18 August, they were due to close down a South American club named Rodo's and a Spanish night club, El Hueco, the Hole, which occupied the upper floors of a building in Denmark Place, behind Denmark Street, 'Tin Pan Alley', once the heart of London's rock scene.
Just after 3.30 in the morning on Saturday, 16 August, Soho fire station, just a few hundred yards away, got a call to say the Denmark Place building was on fire. The fire brigade had not even known of the clubs' existence. There were about 150 people inside, what should have been escape routes were locked, and the fire had spread so fast that some people died with drinks still in their hands.
As for those who got out, some were illegal immigrants and melted away into the night, including quite a few who seemed quite badly injured. A man was later convicted of deliberately starting the fire, and died in prison. For more, see my book London's Disasters from Boudicca to the Banking Crisis (The History Press).
Quoting the book and an interview that I did in 2015, the Daily Express has just published an article marking the 44th anniversary of the fire
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1945243/John-Thompson-uk-biggest-mass-murderer-denmark-place-fireWednesday 11 September 2024
Fireworks: the Honest Truth - from Scotland
It was good to be interviewed by Sally McDonald of the Sunday Post about my new book A History of Fireworks from their Origins to the Present Day (Reaktion Books). Here's what I told her
Tuesday 13 August 2024
A History of Fireworks: hear me on Talk Radio Europe, while stocks last!
Monday 5 August 2024
Fireworks: my new book and the Dorset dimension
https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/a-history-of-fireworks-from-their-origins-to-the-present-day
The Dorset Echo has written a nice piece about it, pointing out that Dorchester, described in the 17th century as 'the most puritan town in England', was probably one of the first places to celebrate 5 November with fireworks. Bonfire Night, of course, marks the failure of Guy Fawkes' Catholic plot in 1605 to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
The Echo also reports that by 1632 local constables were having to arrest apprentices who had been overdoing the celebrations.
This illustrates the authorities' dilemma over 5 November. Until 1859, it was compulsory by law to celebrate the day, but it often led to disorder. In the late 19th century, Dorchester was one of a number of places that tried to tame the occasion by putting on official, publicly financed, events.
Then there is the story of the failed attempt to set a world record for firing off rockets at Bournemouth in 2009.
https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/24471253.history-fireworks-book-sheds-light-dorsets-past/Monday 29 July 2024
Fireworks make waves in America!
My new book A History of Fireworks from their Origins to the Present Day (Reaktion Books) is making waves in America!
Saturday 20 July 2024
Was Trump’s escape a miracle, or predictable? A historian of assassination sheds light
That told me that
successful assassinations by snipers using a rifle at a distance, in other
words the method employed against Donald Trump, were extremely rare, accounting
for only four out of 266, while more than 90 of the assassinations involved
firearms at closer quarters.
Even when firearms replaced stabbing as the favoured means
of assassination in the 19th century, it was generally the handgun
at close quarters rather than the sniper’s rifle. Assassination remained
predominantly up close and personal.
There were, of course, exceptions. Assuming you accept the
official versions of events, and not everyone does, both civil rights leader Martin
Luther King in 1968, and President John F Kennedy in 1963 were shot from a
distance.
But the other three American presidents who were
assassinated, Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881 and McKinley in 1901 were all killed
at close quarters. A sniper had tried to assassinate Lincoln in 1864, but had
hit his hat instead.
In 2003, snipers successfully killed the Serbian prime
minister Zoran Djindjić, who had helped to bring down Slobodan Milošević. He
was shot as he was going into a government building.
Then in 2010 while Thailand was bitterly divided between the
yellow-shirts, largely supported by royalists and the urban middle class, and
the red-shirts, whose members were mainly rural workers, the red-shirts’ head
of security, Major-General Khattiya Sawasdipol, was killed by a sniper, while
he was being interviewed by a reporter. Sawasdipol’s insistence on always
wearing his green military uniform among his red-shirted supporters made him an
easy target.
Perhaps the identification of 'assassin' with 'sniper' results from the success of Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal. In it, perhaps the most famous assassin in fiction plans to shoot President de Gaulle from an upstairs window as he is handing out decorations to war heroes. It is hard to imagine a more meticulously planned attack, but it fails. As the assassin takes aim, the president bows his head to kiss a wounded veteran, and the shot just misses.
A similar thing, of course, happened with Donald Trump, just
as it had in a London theatre in 1800. As King George III stood for the
national anthem, a mentally disturbed ex-soldier fired at him, but George bowed
to the audience and the shot whistled past.
In fact, most assassination attempts fail. Two American
researchers examined 289 serious attempts on political leaders across the world
between 1875 and 2007, and found that only 59, just over one in five,
succeeded.
Assassins’ Deeds
https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/assassins-deeds