The latest in an irregular series of posts on what I’ve been reading.
Books
Watching the Door by Kevin Myers
A fantastic book that captures the grim despair of living and working in Belfast as a journalist during the height of the Troubles. I read it in a day, and genuinely found it difficult to put down. One line that caught my eye was when describing the security situation in 1972, he wrote "[security policies in Northern Ireland] were decided by the dimwits of Stormont, who would have had trouble managing a garden tap.". Much has thankfully changed in NI since then but not the quality of our politicians and civil service.
Losing Small Wars by Frank Ledwidge
A few years ago, I read Simon Akam’s The Changing of the Guard, a book that I described as *“A young man’s book, full of righteous anger at British Army incompetence”. By contrast, Frank Ledwidge has written a forensic account of how the British Army, and specifically its Generals and political leaders, utterly failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was particularly galling to read that the failures of the British Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan had been anticipated in early reports (even before deployment in the case of Iraq) and these had been ignored by the Army leadership. Frank Ledwidge certainly brings the receipts in this book.
Hannibal by Ernle Bradford
I found this account of one of the greatest generals of the Ancient world engrossing. well worth picking up.
The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell
The start of a series of novels from Bernard Cornwell, re-imagining the Arthurian legend. I enjoyed it!
Whirlwind by James Clavell
The 6th book in the Asian saga from James Clavell (by chronology). I always seen it as an outlier as the other books were all focused on either Japan or China, but it is a fantastic introduction to the background of the Iranian Revolution, as well as a cracking adventure story.
Articles
The state we are in – British Army decline
This article details the weakness of the British Army, something that has become very relevant with the war in Ukraine. If you want a more in-depth look at the how and why the British Army has declined since the Cold War, this article details exactly that. This article from David Betz and Michael Rainsborough goes on to document exactly how the Ukraine conflict has shown the deficiencies in Western military strategy, especially around our lack of industrial capacity and military mass.
Is AI a Silver Bullet?
Veteran developer Ian Cooper investigate how AI is going to change software development, and the real productivity gains it is likely to bring, rather than the hype. TLDR: No, it won’t be a silver bullet, and software developers won’t face mass unemployment as they are replaced by AI.
Other articles that might be of interest include:
- After months of coding with LLMs, I’m going back to using my brain
- Here’s how I use LLMs to help me write code
The last days of Eric Liddell
This article details the last days of Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner and a Christian missionary, in a Japanese internment camp. Incredibly moving, but in the end, as Liddell wrote, ‘all will be well’.
Why It’s So Hard to Build a Jet Engine
This long form piece documents the progression of the jet engine, and how little new development there has been in recent years due to the insane development costs. As a result, there has been a focus on incremental improvement on existing engine designs rather than new engine development.
This is what a respectability cascade looks like (Paywall)
Louise Perry explores why the Roherham rape gang scandal became publicly debated in the UK after so many years of deliberately not being discussed.
Wikipedia Neutrality
I’ve read a number of articles recently detailing biases and prejudice in Wikipedia articles, and these 2 articles were the ones that stood out to me: