21Aug 2017 by Andrew P No Comments

Dunkirk (2017)

History Blog
Recently, I went to see the film “Dunkirk” at the cinema. I had seen trailers for it and they looked very intense and interesting, but I wasn’t very familiar with the events that the film was based on, so I did some research online. The film is set during World War 2 and is about the evacuation of Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk in May 1940. Germany had advanced into France and Allied troops were trapped, so British and French forces sent air, ground and naval support to help cover and slowly evacuate soldiers. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian vessels were used to evacuate troops and at the end of the mission approximately 330,000 Allied soldiers were safely evacuated. The film follows various different characters from different…
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03Aug 2017 by Andrew P No Comments

The proposed Channel Tunnel Rail Link of the 1980s.

History Blog
At the local Swanley History Group, there was a talk on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link that was planned to be constructed locally in the 1980s. There were several photos, maps, documents and news clips, including a clip about Swanley from "Spitting Image" which was a popular satirical TV show in the 80s. In the 1980s, Swanley was in the news because British Rail wanted to put a rail link between London and the Channel Tunnel through Swanley. Local action groups raised money to oppose this route as it would blight thousands of homes and rip communities apart. It didn't help that the route kept changing and it took many years before the protests were successful and the high speed rail link avoided Swanley. Instead, it went from Stratford through…
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