1914: A Zeppelin drops a single bomb on St James's Rectory, Dover, in the first ever air raid on British soil.
1942: German scientist Werner von Braun tests the world's first surface-to-surface missile at Peenemunde.
1979: Soviet forces invade Afghanistan in support of the Marxist government, beginning a nine-year occupation.
The next invader
Prussia's shattering defeat of France in 1870 did not mean the end of invasion fear in Britain. As the traditional enemy against which massive new defences had been constructed during the 1860s, France had been removed as a threat but the manner of its removal caused new fears. Revealed as efficient, militaristic, ruthless and ambitious for world power and territory, Germany was now seen by Britain as the potential new enemy - the next invader. This new fear was expressed in an unusual form as the polemical invasion novel and the (usually jingoistic) popular magazine or newspaper.
Germany was now seen by Britain as the potential new enemy - the next invader.
The first of these alarmist articles, which appeared initially in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and then in sixpenny-book form, was the Battle of Dorking. Published in 1871 and written by George Chesney, it described vividly the way in which a German invasion would affect ordinary households and argued that Britain was, due to its complacency and reductions on military spending, vulnerable to attack from Germany.
The non-arrival of the Germans on Britain's shores during the 1870s did not cool the fevered imaginations of the alarmist novelists. The next target for invasion terror was the proposed Channel Tunnel; in 1882 a scheme to build a railway tunnel from Calais to Dover was proposed in Parliament. The titles of the novels this scheme provoked - England in Danger, The Seizure of the Channel Tunnel, The Battle of the Channel Tunnel - reveal the popular concerns that were shared by Queen Victoria, who called the tunnel 'objectionable', and by Lord Randolph Churchill who probably summed up public opinion when he observed that 'the reputation of England has hitherto depended on her being, as it were, Virgo intacta'.
Strike at the heart
Objections from all levels of society stopped the project after a couple of miles of tunnel had been excavated from each coast, but no sooner had this 'threat' been stymied than another appeared. As if to underline the almost manic nature of Britain's late 19th century invasion fear, France, so suddenly thrashed by the Prussia, made a sudden reappearance in the mid 1880s as enemy number one. What if, wondered some more pessimistic military analyst, France and Russia joined forces to invade England to strike with terrifying ease at the very heart of the British Empire - London. The capital's defences were outmoded and organised primarily for the defence of its dockyards at Tilbury and Chatham while the regular army was small and scattered over much of the world policing the empire.
The capital's defences were outmoded and organised primarily for the defence of its dockyards at Tilbury and Chatham...
A flurry of learned and sensational articles and anxious debates in Parliament stirred up great public and political concern. Typical was a little book, published anonymously in 1885 and entitled The Siege of London. It envisaged a French invasion that culminated in a tremendous battle in Hyde Park, the capitulation of London and the eventual loss of India, the Cape, Gibraltar and Ireland.
The consequences in Britain of this new fear of France was an increase in the size and improvement in training and equipment of Britain's volunteer forces, and the construction, to the southeast of London, of a ring of fortified mobilisation centres, notably at Box Hill and Henley Grove near Guildford. These centres were to act as supply depots and as rallying points around which local volunteers could muster and from which they could draw arms and ammunition.
1942: German scientist Werner von Braun tests the world's first surface-to-surface missile at Peenemunde.
1979: Soviet forces invade Afghanistan in support of the Marxist government, beginning a nine-year occupation.
The next invader
Prussia's shattering defeat of France in 1870 did not mean the end of invasion fear in Britain. As the traditional enemy against which massive new defences had been constructed during the 1860s, France had been removed as a threat but the manner of its removal caused new fears. Revealed as efficient, militaristic, ruthless and ambitious for world power and territory, Germany was now seen by Britain as the potential new enemy - the next invader. This new fear was expressed in an unusual form as the polemical invasion novel and the (usually jingoistic) popular magazine or newspaper.
Germany was now seen by Britain as the potential new enemy - the next invader.
The first of these alarmist articles, which appeared initially in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and then in sixpenny-book form, was the Battle of Dorking. Published in 1871 and written by George Chesney, it described vividly the way in which a German invasion would affect ordinary households and argued that Britain was, due to its complacency and reductions on military spending, vulnerable to attack from Germany.
The non-arrival of the Germans on Britain's shores during the 1870s did not cool the fevered imaginations of the alarmist novelists. The next target for invasion terror was the proposed Channel Tunnel; in 1882 a scheme to build a railway tunnel from Calais to Dover was proposed in Parliament. The titles of the novels this scheme provoked - England in Danger, The Seizure of the Channel Tunnel, The Battle of the Channel Tunnel - reveal the popular concerns that were shared by Queen Victoria, who called the tunnel 'objectionable', and by Lord Randolph Churchill who probably summed up public opinion when he observed that 'the reputation of England has hitherto depended on her being, as it were, Virgo intacta'.
Strike at the heart
Objections from all levels of society stopped the project after a couple of miles of tunnel had been excavated from each coast, but no sooner had this 'threat' been stymied than another appeared. As if to underline the almost manic nature of Britain's late 19th century invasion fear, France, so suddenly thrashed by the Prussia, made a sudden reappearance in the mid 1880s as enemy number one. What if, wondered some more pessimistic military analyst, France and Russia joined forces to invade England to strike with terrifying ease at the very heart of the British Empire - London. The capital's defences were outmoded and organised primarily for the defence of its dockyards at Tilbury and Chatham while the regular army was small and scattered over much of the world policing the empire.
The capital's defences were outmoded and organised primarily for the defence of its dockyards at Tilbury and Chatham...
A flurry of learned and sensational articles and anxious debates in Parliament stirred up great public and political concern. Typical was a little book, published anonymously in 1885 and entitled The Siege of London. It envisaged a French invasion that culminated in a tremendous battle in Hyde Park, the capitulation of London and the eventual loss of India, the Cape, Gibraltar and Ireland.
The consequences in Britain of this new fear of France was an increase in the size and improvement in training and equipment of Britain's volunteer forces, and the construction, to the southeast of London, of a ring of fortified mobilisation centres, notably at Box Hill and Henley Grove near Guildford. These centres were to act as supply depots and as rallying points around which local volunteers could muster and from which they could draw arms and ammunition.