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In this short editorial, we outline some of the reasons why we think books and book reviews remain important for the field of cultural geography.

Whilst historians and historical geographers have offered much to scholarship concerning military geographies, rarely have military mobilities been at the forefront of these enquiries. Where scholars have considered the movements that underscore military activities (within and beyond the theatre of war) movement is frequently taken to be the straightforward motion of people, equipment, vehicles and so on, from point A to B. This paper opens the special issue on ‘Military mobilities in an age of global war, 1870–1945’ by outlining the role that scholarship on mobility can play in understanding military operations and activities. It focuses on a number of military mobilities, examining how different technologies, knowledges, infrastructures and mobile embodied practices have been vital to military operations. Centred around four themes – military ‘moorings’ and ‘hubs’; military movement spaces; the work of military geographers on movement; and the movement of military bodies – this paper demonstrates how mobilities literature and historical geographies may intersect and inform one another. The paper closes by introducing the four papers which focus on the increasing mechanisation and mobilisation of military forces between 1870 and 1945.

Mobility and movement are central to military actions and military life, and yet despite an increasing concern with military geographies and the geographies of mobility, little consideration has been given by scholars to the political geographies of military mobilities and movements, past or present. In these interventions, we examine how these different bodies of work might intersect, focusing on social media, methods for tracing military mobilities, the role of military technologies in facilitating everyday mobilities, and the more-than-human dimensions of military mobilities.

Merriman, P., Jones, R. (2009). Symbols of Justice: the Welsh Language Society’s campaign for bilingual road signs in Wales, 1967-1980. Journal of Historical Geography, 35(2), 350-375.

Jones, R., Merriman, P. (2009). Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: bilingual road signs in Wales. Political Geography, 28 (3), 164-173.

Merriman, P. (2009). Marc Auge on space, place and non-place. Irish Journal of French Studies, (9), 9-29. Special Issue No. 9; Guest Editor: Douglas Smith

Recent years have seen an increasing number of academics attempt to write more process-oriented and ‘non-representational’ accounts of landscape. Drawing upon this literature, I discuss a number of the movements, materialities, and practices entailed in constructing England's M1 motorway in the late 1950s. The performances, movements and durability of a diverse range of things—including earth-moving machines, public relations brochures, maps, helicopters, senior engineers, aggregate and labourers—are shown to be important to the construction and ordering of the motorway and spaces of the construction company in different times and spaces, with people's experiences or understandings of construction, both now and in the past, emerging through memories, talk and embodied encounters with architectures, texts and artefacts which are assembled, circulated and/or archived. Aerial perspectives assumed a prominent role in depictions of construction, while journalists and engineers frequently drew upon a military vocabulary and alluded to the military nature of the project when discussing the motorway.

This is an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in mobility across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study.

Introduction: A Neglected Perspective within Internal Migration ResearchIn London by 1980s rock band The Smiths, singer Steven Morrissey sketches an image of a young working class man leaving Manchester for a new life in the capital. Whilst London is little over two hours away by train, this move is clearly a major event in the young man’s life (Tyrrell and Kraft, Chapter 2). It is of great significance, not just for him – as he constantly wonders if he has made the ‘right decision’, apprehensive of the trials and tribulations ahead – but also for his family (left ‘grieving’, yet jealous because they are ‘the ones who had to stay behind’) and girlfriend (left with a ‘really ragged notion’ that he will return, yet knowing ‘that when he goes, he really goes’).