The Burning Blue: A New History of the Battle of Britain Book

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of arguably the most important air battle in history, two academics from the University of Edinburgh have assembled this multi-faceted collection of essays on the Battle of Britain, offering a variety of new perspectives. Some of these are intriguing: for instance, Owen Dudley Edward's piece on "The Battle of Britain and Children's Literature" and, taking a similarly cultural rather than military approach, Tony Aldgate's "The Battle of Britain on Film"--although he is rather unfair on that superlative bit of celluloid stiff-upper-lippery, Reach for the Skies. Other essays seem pretty pointless: an essay on "The American Perspective"-unless, of course, the Battle was won by the Americans after all. The gems here, however, are Wallace Cunningham's "Memories of a British Veteran" and Nigel Rose's "An RAF Pilot's Letters to His Parents, June-December 1940," full of schoolboy jollity and have-at-'em spirit: I'd no sooner arrived back when a crowd of Junkers 87s dive-bombed Tangmere and just about razed the hangars to the ground. We had a magnificent view of the whole affair and it was most thrilling to watch. So, although this is no match for the sheer narrative thrill of Len Deighton's Fighter or Deighton and Max Hastings'Battle of Britain, there is still some good stuff here and provocative new ways of looking at a national legend. --Christopher HartRead More