The more I read, the more the world resembles a giant web of connections...

After reading Regeneration with Simon Haisell &co, I took myself on a 'field trip' to the Imperial War Museum to look at some of the paintings in Kristine Benoit de Bykhovetz's brilliant post on WWI art.

In the main WWI gallery my eye was caught by a display on aerial bombardment - I always forget that this was happening so early! - and when I looked closely, this map recovered from a Zeppelin in 1916 contains a note saying that a copy was also carried ”by Casement when landing in Ireland".

I'd just been reading about Roger Casement (his influential report on the horrors of the Belgian Congo and his eventual execution for treason for accepting German support in the fight for Irish independence) in Maya Jasonoff's excellent The Dawn Watch, as part of my background reading on Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Since then I've read Adam Hochschild's (also-excellent) King Leopold's Ghost which filled in more details on Casement's trial - how his speech at his trial impressed Jawaharlal Nehru (can I count this as a link to Midnight's Children?), & how Casement's homosexuality was used against him, with widely circulated copies of relevant diary entries helping to seal his fate, bringing me back full circle to Rivers warning Sassoon of the dangers of exposure in Regeneration.

Is it just me who finds it incredibly satisfying to stumble upon connections like these?