Question - why do Brits still include the letter "U" in words like colour and armour? Answer: because Rick Astley is British

This is the theme music for "The Mandalorian & Groghu" which is in cinemas from tomorrow:

The Village People song " In the Navy " as performed for the end credits of the nautical comedy film, " Down Periscope. "

For hundreds of years the Ryal Navy has used specialist ships to support land battles. During the battleship era these were called monitors. A monitor was a medium size ship - about the size of a cruiser, HMS Roberts displaced 8.000 tons - which carried a few battleship-calibre guns, had a shallow draft, and was designed specifically to defeat shore batteries and engage other land targets. Some people argued that the monitor concept was outdated at the time of the second world war. During the D-Day campaign, as the allies started the liberation of Europe. HMS Roberts proved them wrong. This is her story.   

Another piece of fan-fiction in which Grand Admiral Thrawn and Captain Pallaeon discuss how and why empires fall. Thrawn says that  " Empires do not fall when they are defeated: they fall because they believe they cannot be. " This video is a transformative fan project created for entertainment. It is not official Star Wars content. All worldbuilding and narrative elements are original interpretations

 

This is the story of the second battle of Sirte and how the 15th cruiser squadron and escorting destroyers under Rear Admiral Philip Vian got a convoy through to Malta in the face of attack by overwhelmingly superior forces including a battleship. A fictionalised version of this true story was published by C.S. Forester as a novel under the title, "The Ship."

Michael Pennington has died at the age of 82, his representatives have confirmed. Best known as the actor who played the commander of the second Death Star, Moff Jerjerrod, in Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, the actor was an accomplished Shakespearean and is listed as an Honorary Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also co-founded the English Shakespeare Company alongside theatre director Michael Bogdanov. Born Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington on June 7, 1943, in Cambridge, England, the actor's on-screen career began in 1965 with a supporting part in the BBC mini-series, The War of the Roses. He went on to have more than 70 screen roles across his career, including playing Michael Foot in "The Iron Lady." Rest in Peace

A REWRITE OF THE HORNBLOWER BOOK "FLYING COLOURS" Many of the "Honorverse" stories are either obviously influenced by characters and situations in C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels or pay open homage to them. But the eighth Honorverse book takes this to the next level in that it almost exactly parallels one of Forester's novels -  Flying Colours . In each case the central character had been captured by the enemy in the previous novel by chronological sequence in their respective stories - Honor Harrington had been captured by the Peeps in " In enemy hands " and Horatio Hornblower by the French at the end of " A ship of the line. " Both protagonists are then carted away with a few of their closest associates by an evil enemy who make no secret that what they have in mind for our heroes is their execution on trumped-up charges. " Flying Colours " and " Echoes of Honor " are the stories of the struggles of Horatio Hornblo...

 Also on X this week. Any suggestions?

On this day eleven years ago, in response to a question about who your mother might be in a Galaxy far, far, away, the late Carrie Fisher made a great comeback:

"The Jedi were not destroyed by the Sith. They were destroyed by their own assumptions."

Works equally well if you use "The Syndicure" ( the governing body of the Chiss Ascendancy ) or "The Galactic Senate" or "The House of Commons" or any other governing parliament instead of the US Congress.

Sir David Attenborough, the distinguished naturalist and broadcaster, is 100 years old today (8th May 2026). Many Happy Returns!

IN WHICH IT ALL GOES WRONG ... After her victories against Pirates and Peep raiders in Silesia in "Honor among enemies," Honor Harrington has spent a few months working with the Weapons Development board, but now returns to Grayson where Admiral White Haven is putting together the Alliance's "Eighth Fleet" which will take the war to the Peep aggressors. But in this seventh book in the series she will be tested as never before ...   "In Enemy hands" begins about a year after the end of "Honor among enemies," six years into the war against the People's republic of Haven (Peeps), and about two thousand years in our future. Reflecting the fact that war is expensive in terms of human life and suffering as well as resources, David Weber's books have never shied away from depicting the pain and loss involved. especially for those on both sides when one side in the war is a ruthless dictatorship to which human life is cheap. The "P...

Star Wars Daily has asked what famous line Admiral Ackbar says. Of course you probably all know that the correct answer is "It's a Trap!" What other suggestions do people have?

Another fan fiction video with Admiral Thrawn and Captain Pellaeon discussing this history of the Galaxy far, far away. Here they discuss how Thrawn, if he had not been hijacked to the Peridia galaxy, would have managed the trap at Endor.

These fan fiction videos showing discussions between Admiral Mitth'raw'nurodo and Captain Pellaeon are not canon, but many of them are entertaining and thought-provoking. Here Thrawn discusses the fall of the Galactic Republic.

" The Forever War " by Joe Haldeman, was published in 1974 and I first read it as a child.  It is an absolutely iconic novel of what relativity might do to the lives of people who travel in space, especially if we ever had the disaster of an interstellar war. "The Forever War" is one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, and probably just about beats Ursula Le Guin's " The word for world is forest " as the greatest Science Fiction anti-war novel of all time.   ( Original book cover art above was by Patrick Woodroffe ) The book is narrated by William Mandela, and at the start of the book, set in 1996, he is a private, called up to fight in a war which has just started against an alien race known as the "Taurans.". In the author's preface to the Gollancz masterworks edition, written in 1997, Haldeman explained that he set the start of the story in 1996 so that it was just possible that some of the officers and senior non-comm...

 A piece of fan fiction, but it makes some good arguments.

" May the 4th be with you " was first used by the British Conservative party. It was a newspaper advert message from party workers to it's leader, Margaret Thatcher, who became Britain's first woman Prime Minister on 4th May 1979 after winning the general election the previous day.

May the 4th be with you!

 A question particularly apposite to today. Which organisation first coined the phrase " May the 4th be with you " on 4th May 1979 and as a complement to whom on what historic achievement?  If you want to submit an answer please put it in the comments. The correct answer will be confirmed  tomorrow morning. 

" We are not meat " by Steve Higgs and Hunter Hemsworth Higgs is the first in the " Lost in Time " trilogy of novels about time travel to the age of the dinosaurs. Bestselling author Steve Higgs started writing in when he was still a captain in the British army: his first novel, "Paranormal Nonsense" was about an agency exposing fake ghosts and imaginary monsters. It's basically "Scooby Doo" set in Kent and without any talking dogs, and went on to spawn more than 20 novels in that series along plus several spin-off series. The "Lost in time" trilogy came from an idea from Steve's son Hunter which followed an event at the Natural History Museum in London. The premise for the story is that a private company run by a self-made billionaire, Leonard Willis, has discovered the secret of Time Travel. For those who are familiar with both the book and film versions of "Jurassic Park," Leonard Willis, is so evil that he makes Mi...

Forty-four years ago today, the Royal Nayy submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentinian cruiser ARA General Belgrano. In almost no other country in the world, as she herself observed, could a government face lasting criticism for an operation during a military conflict which removed a major enemy unit with no casualties on our own side and made it significantly easier to win that conflict. However, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mrs Thatcher, faced years of criticism about the attack, her motives for allowing the sinking, and whether she had told the truth about it.  It has now been proven beyond reasonable doubt that her motive was indeed to protect the men and women of our armed forces. I suspect that her accusers genuinely thought the charges they were making against her were justified. However, given what we now know following the declassification under the 30-year rule of documents about the decision, I don't see that the case stands up either that Mrs Thatcher...