The most recommended Battle of Britain books

Because pictures are worth a thousand words, I had to include this “coffee-table” book about the Battle of Britain among the “best five” books. This book is 200 pages of evocative images — of aircraft, of pilots, WAAF, controllers, and commanders, of landscapes, airfields, and equipment. The words of Bungay and especially Bishop are transformed into something more tangible and understandable by this lovely collection of contemporary photographs.

Like First Light, the classic Battle of Britain memoir by Geoffrey Wellum, And Some Fell on Stony Ground provides a vivid and sometimes terrifying portrait of life as an RAF pilot during World War II.

Unlike Wellum, however, the author of this short, fictionalised memoir wasn’t a fighter pilot. He was, instead, a member of Bomber Command, whose crews endured the nightmare of recurrent nocturnal flights over Nazi Germany, where they dodged searchlights, anti-aircraft fire, and lurking German night fighters.

Read Leslie Mann’s posthumously published book, and you’ll feel you were there with him.

This book is a history of the Battle of Britain, but one focusing more on the common folk and non-aviation personnel that held England together, upright, and unconquered during the German onslaught that followed the collapse of France. Meticulously researched, painstakingly analyzed, and somewhat shocking in its conclusions.

Lord, what an eye-opener! This book shows just how deep into totalitarianism a democracy can sink, just how fascistic a democracy can become overnight, and just how riven with class strife and unfair treatment the UK was throughout the battle.

Here are a few examples of the things that were happening during that time.

1) Given the shortage of coal miners and an unwillingness to pay the miners a fair wage, something on the order of twenty thousand young men were effectively enslaved, not conscripted to fight, but enslaved, to mine coal.

2) The British people were lied to consistently and continuously… show more.

Sweet Thames Run Softly is a classic of natural history literature. 

It is reputed to have been read by British servicemen during World War II to remind them of home and peace. It is just as evocative today.  It describes a journey down the River Thames in a punt, and it meanders in the same way as the river does. 

The beauty lies in the text and the charm is in the author’s etchings. This is a book that I read time and again, whenever I want inspiration or solace.

It might be a venerable classic, but it’s still in print for a very good reason. Collier focusses on the six weeks of 1940’s English summer when Great Britain was in extreme peril of defeat and subjugation. He relates the history of this pivotal moment using a rich tapestry of personal accounts and eye-witness testimonies of the real people who were involved in this epic struggle. We hear the voices of pilots fighting for their lives in the air, their crews grafting on the ground to keep the aircraft serviceable and the civilians who daily watched the frenetic dogfights that swirled through the sky above their towns and villages, duels to the death upon which the very fate of the nation depended.

A British term of endearment for a person engaged in scientific or technical research, Boffins have played a critical role in the development of our modern society. This book is the autobiography of the first Boffin who was essential in developing the radar system that won the Battle of Britain. Although nearly a century has passed, the “can-do” technical spirit of Boffins, Geeks, Nerds, and Hackers remains at the core of modern innovation.

I like this series set in wartime London. Electra “Ellie” McDonnell, a safecracker, is in business with her Uncle Mick, they rob homes of the rich.

After they are arrested, the handsome Major Ramsay has a deal for Ellie: if she will help him, he’ll let her, and her uncle walk free. A straightforward deal, except for the romantic complication.

Greg Baughen had written over a million words on the evolving role and functions of the Royal Air Force from its foundation in 1918 to the post-second world war period, then decided to find a publisher!

The work is thus published in a number of volumes this being the fourth. Never frightened to challenge conventional wisdom the author deals with the RAF and British Government’s preoccupation with strategic bombing at the cost of developing effective tactical air power. As he notes German occupation of much of Europe was accomplished on the ground with effective air support.

The Kent countryside has a strong enough presence in this book to become a character in its own right, when the exquisite beauty of an English summer contrasts with the lethal Battle of Britain dog fights leaving vapour trails in the sky overhead. As a local young woman befriends a group of brave, doomed fighter pilots, the story captures the desperation and the absurdities of conflict, and the tender nature of transient and yet hopeful love. The author was commissioned by the RAF to write about the war, and I can tell from his pinpoint, unflinching detail of that unsettling time, that he was a first-hand eyewitness. 

The book is well named. The Spitfire invokes a visceral response in most people, amplified in those that feel even the slightest cultural connection to the events that unfolded in the Kentish skies in 1940. Nichol centres his book on this emotional premise, conveying the feelings of the pilots who flew the Spitfire, including the ladies of the Air Transport Auxiliary, and the crews that maintained them. We learn about the development of this most beautiful of all warbirds and follow it into all the world’s theatres of war, a story expressed through the first-hand accounts of many veterans who flew and fought behind the roar of the Merlin. This is as close as most of us will come to being inside the cockpit of a Spitfire.