Futility Closet

In June 1940, German forces took the Channel Islands, a small British dependency off the coast of France. They expected the occupation to go easily, but they hadn't reckoned on the island of Sark, ruled by an iron-willed noblewoman with a disdain for Nazis. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Sibyl Hathaway and her indomitable stand against the Germans. We'll also overtake an earthquake and puzzle over an inscrutable water pipe. Intro: Raymond Chandler gave 10 rules for writing a detective novel. In 1495 Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight. Sources for our feature on Sybil Hathaway: Sybil Hathaway, Dame of Sark: An Autobiography, 1961. Alan and Mary Wood, Islands in Danger: The Story of the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, 1940-1945, 1955. Gilly Carr, Paul Sanders, and Louise Willmot, Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the Channel Islands, 2014. Madeleine Bunting, The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule, 1940-1945, 2014. Roy