Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a young boy who made model airplanes and hung them on his bedroom ceiling with fishing lines and thumbtacks as if the planes were dogfighting. The aircraft were inspired by a movie called The Battle of Britain and were the same Messerschmitts, Spitfires, and Hurricanes. The boy grew up and began writing books for a living, making it his mission to help people love history as much as he did. One day, it dawned on him to write about his long-ago planes and their epic battle. I am that boy, and that's when I wrote my book.
I wrote
Taking London: Winston Churchill and the Fight to Save Civilization
I believe Len Deighton is among the great underrated authors of the last fifty years. John Le Carre overshadows his spy novels, but no less complex and subtle. His sharply drawn characters are unique and complex.
I fell in love with this one because it tells the story of the Battle of Britain in exceptional, nerd-level detail without becoming boring or dry. I was captivated. This book made me want to write my book. Left unsaid is that any author who can write great nonfiction and fiction is a true pro.
'The most honest attempt yet to tell how the Battle of Britain really was' Andrew Wilson, Observer
History is swamped by patriotic myths about the aerial combat fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe over the summer of 1940. In his gripping history of the Battle of Britain, Len Deighton drew on a decade of research and his own wartime experiences to puncture these myths and point towards a more objective, and even more inspiring, truth.
'Revolutionised thinking about the Battle of Britain in a way that has not been seriously challenged since' The Times
I did not love this one at first. This is the life story of Richard Hillary, a would-be poet who happened to fly Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. His first attempts to tell what it feels like to be in the cockpit engaged in a life-or-death dogfight at 15,000 felt self-absorbed.
But then he reveals what it’s like to be shot down and the harrowing aftermath of a cockpit fire. All pretense is set aside as Hillary battles to return to the sky and be a pilot again. It’s a lovely, lovely book.
In 1918, the RAF was established as the world's first independent air force. To mark the 100th anniversary of its creation, Penguin are publishing the Centenary Collection, a series of six classic books highlighting the skill, heroism and esprit de corps that have characterised the Royal Air Force throughout its first century.
The Last Enemy is Richard Hillary's extraordinary account of his experience as a Spitfire pilot in the Second World War. Hillary was shot down during the Battle of Britain, leading to months in hospital as part of Archibald McIndoe's 'Guinea Pig Club', undergoing pioneering plastic surgery to rebuild…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
I write stories about famous people and moments in history. I like to strip down the narrative and make history read like a top-notch thriller. But to do that, I need to stand on the shoulders of authors who devoted ten or a dozen years to researching and writing the detailed lives of a subject they adore. I do not have the attention span to spend so long on one character.
I love this book because William Manchester (and Paul Reid, who stepped in to finish the book when Manchester died) loves Winston Churchill. What he wore, how he spoke, who he loved, what he drank. It is hundreds of pages of gorgeous detail, waiting for a long winter’s reading night.
This is the second in William Manchester's masterly 3 volume life of Winston Churchill. It contests the favoured view that Churchill's finest hour was as Britain's wartime leader, viewing his greatest period as a statesman during 1932 to 1940, ignored in Parliament and disowned by the social and political establishment as a warmonger, he stood his ground, both in the Commons and outside of it, maintaining his principles until ultimately he succeeded in drawing the country behind him. He is seen as a man with limitations who could be unkind and callous, indiscreet and reckless to the point of foolhardiness…
Geoffrey Wellum was the youngest pilot to fly in the Battle of Britain, getting his wings as a teenager. I love this book for its beautiful descriptions of flight training, the rigors of squadron life, and the odd way he feels after taking a life in combat–all while being so young he sleeps in his childhood bedroom when returning home on leave.
But I love this book most because Wellum kept these stories to himself for almost forty years, writing these memoirs and then publishing them only when he was in his old age.
This beautiful memory of life as a fighter pilot is Wellum’s one and only book and one of the great adventure books of all time.
The first-hand account of a 17-year-old Englishman who became an ace fighter pilot with the RAF, the youngest at the time, and flew Spitfires during the Battle of Britain.
When King Priam's pregnant daughter was fleeing the sack of Troy, Stan was there. When Jesus of Nazareth was beaten and crucified, Stan was there - one crossover. He’s been a Hittite warrior, a Silk Road mercenary, a reluctant rebel in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, and an information peddler…
I love well-researched fiction that reads like history. I love this book enough that I’ve read it twice. I keep it in a special section of my library reserved for books that I will never give away or loan to friends for fear of never getting them back.
I love that this book inspires me to write fiction, something I ought to get cracking on now that I’ve written almost thirty history books. I love the characters, I love that I can’t put them down (even when I know what is next), and I love revisiting my time with the good guys and bad guys as the story reveals itself.
WINNER OF THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR FICTION
A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.'
For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic…
Summer 1940. England stands alone as Germany prepares to unleash its military might on the island nation. In London, new prime minister Winston Churchill is determined to defeat the Nazi menace. His secret weapons are a new fighter plane, the Spitfire, and the daring young men flying them.
Told in fast-paced, you-are-there fashion, my book reveals the epic story of the Battle of Britain–entirely contested by British and German fighter pilots in the skies over England. Top Gun meets the Nazis. The reader goes inside the cockpit as the taut narrative unveils complex personal sagas of not just Churchill but also four legendary pilots set against the defiant backdrop of wartime London.
In the first century, Rome’s celebrated love poet Ovid finds himself in exile, courtesy of an irate Emperor, in the far-flung town of Tomis. Appalled at being banished to a barbarous region at the very edge of the Empire, Ovid soon discovers that he has a far more urgent -…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
