Known for his black humor and expertise in military aviation, Derek Robinson is best renowned for his novels on the Royal Flying Corps. The Goshawk Squadron was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. World War One pilots were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolised them as gallant young heroes. At just twenty-three, Major Stanley Woolley is the old man and commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron. He abhors any notion of chivalry in the clouds and is determined to obliterate the decent, gentlemanly outlook of his young, public school-educated pilots--for their own good. But as the war goes on he is forced to thrown greener and greener pilots into the meat grinder. Goshawk Squadron finds its gallows humor and black camaraderie no defense against a Spandau bullet to the back of the head.
To his C.O. he's an idiot, to everyone else--especially the tormenting Australian who shares his billet--a pompous bastard. This is 1916, the year of the Somme, giving Paxton precious little time to grow from innocent to veteran.
Robinson's crooked salute to the dogged heroes of the R.A.F.'s early bombing campaign is a wickedly humorous portrait of men doing their duty in flying death traps, fully aware, in those dark days of war, there was nothing else to do but ...
Distractions from the brutality of the air war include British nurses; eccentric Russian pilots; bureaucratic battles over the plum-jam ration; rat-hunting with Very pistols; and the C.O.'s patent, potent cocktail, known as "Hornet's Sting.
As with all Robinson's novels, the raw dialogue, rich black humor and brilliantly rendered, adrenaline-packed dogfights bring the Battle of Britain, and the brave few who fought it, to life.
Dirty and smelly. Kellaway had put him in Tiny Lush's tent. Lush was six foot three and fourteen stone. He wore Arab sandals, dirty shorts and a dirty shirt. He hadn't shaved for a month; above his short, ...
Derek Robinson returns with another rip-roaring, gung-ho R.A.F. adventure, one that exposes and confronts the brinkmanship and saber-rattling of the Cold War Era.
Experience the chilling combat of World War I from inside an early biplane in this classic novel, by a pilot who lived through the war himself.
“What a brutal bloody business,” she said. “Of courseitis,” Luis told her. “That's why it pays so well.” They went to the inside. “I still think you should go British,” she said. “Yes.” He made a face. “It's a great pity to interfere ...
'There's a splendid little war going on,' a British staff officer told them. 'You'll like it.' Looked like fun. But the war was neither splendid nor little.
... Sylvia Townsend 156 Water Music 96 Waterland 58 Waters, Sarah 80, 155–6 Waterworks, The 32, 33 Watson's Apology ... 80–1 Weyman, Stanley J. 125 When Christ and his Saints Slept 108 When We Were Gods 63 White Castle, The 103, ...