This posting is two or three years late, but in an attempt to clear the rising number of unread books in the house, I have organised unread books into several piles: those I have no intention of reading (to be disposed of), those I’d like to read soon, and those I’ll save for when I have time. A quick skim of Spitfire: The Biography revealed the following dedication.
I can hardly better the dedication Alfred Price made in his excellent Spitfire: A complete Fighting History ‘to the men and women who transposed the Spitfire – a mere fabrication of aluminium alloy, steel, rubber, Perspex and a few other things – into the centrepiece of an epic without parallel in the history of aviation.’
Nonetheless. I would like to add my own – to the infamous memory of Britain’s New Labour governments, their love of ill-founded war and their authoritarian fight, undertaken with greater effectiveness than the Luftwaffee, to undermine those civil liberties and hard-won traditions of freedom fought for by decent people over many centuries, and especially by those, of whatever nationality, class, creed, colour, age, gender, or political affiliation, who designed, built and flew the Spitfire.
And in loving memory of my father.
Can you guess which newspaper this writer works for?
