It's 1917, and Captain Stanley Woolley joins an R.F.C. squadron whose pilots are starting to fear the worst: their war over the Western Front may go on for years. A pilot's life is usually short, so while it lasts it is celebrated strenuously.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'.

They joined an R.A.F. known as 'the best flying club in the world', but when war pitches the young pilots of 409 Squadron into battle over Germany, their training, tactics and equipment are soon found wanting, their twin-engined bombers obsolete from the off. Chances of completing a 30-operation tour? One in three. At best.Robinson's crooked salute to the dogged heroes of the R.A.F.'s early bombing campaign is a wickedly humourous portrait of men doing their duty in flying death tr...

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 throw greener and greener pilots into the meat ...

North Africa, 1942. Dust, heat, thirst, flies. A good clean fight, for those who like that sort of thing, and some do. From an advanced landing field, striking hard and escaping fast, our old friends from Hornet Squadron (Piece of Cake) play Russian roulette, flying their clapped-out Tomahawks on ground-strafing forays. Meanwhile, on the ground, the men of Captain Lampard's S.A.S. patrol drive hundreds of miles behind enemy lines to plant bombs on German aircraft.This is the story ...

Flight Lieutenant Silk, a twice-decorated Lancaster pilot in WW II, rejoins the R.A.F. and qualifies to fly the Vulcan bomber. Piloting a Vulcan is an unforgettable experience: no other aircraft comes close to matching its all-round performance. And as bombers go, it's drop-dead gorgeous.But there's a catch. The Vulcan has only one role: to make a second strike. To act in retaliation for a Russian nuclear attack. Silk knows that knows that if he ever flies his Vulcan in anger, he'l...

From the Phoney War of 1939 to the Battle of Britain in 1940, the pilots of Hornet Squadron learn their lessons the hard way. Hi-jinks are all very well on the ground, but once in a Hurricane's cockpit, the best killers keep their wits close.Newly promoted Commanding Officer Fanny Barton has a job on to whip the Hornets into shape before they face the Luftwaffe's seasoned pilots. And sometimes Fighter Command, with its obsolete tactics and stiff doctrines, is the real menace....

Fresh from school in June 1916, Lieutenant Oliver Paxton's first solo flight is to lead a formation of biplanes across the Channel to join Hornet Squadron in France.Five days later, he crash-lands at his destination, having lost his map, his ballast and every single plane in his charge. 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 littl...

The war to end all wars, people said in 1918. Not for long. By 1919, White Russians were fighting Bolshevik Reds for control of their country, and Winston Churchill (then Secretary of State for War) wanted to see Communism 'strangled in its cradle'. So a volunteer R.A.F. squadron, flying Sopwith Camels, went there to duff up the Reds. '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 l...

Short, brisk and highly readable, this account stands out from the flood of books written for the Centenary of the Great War.In Why 1914?, Derek Robinson - trained as a historian, shortlisted for the Booker Prize - applies his novelist's skills to asking how and why Europe hurried into such a massive disaster.He captures a world of kings and Kaisers, generals and infantrymen. None of them knew what a big European war meant. All the combatant nations assumed it woul...

This autobiographical novella was inspired by my life growing up outside of Boston. Comedic, dramatic and quite revealing; this latest title will truly show why I am the raving lunatic I am today.

Jersey, 1944. Lieutenant Earl Kramer, sole survivor of a ditched USAF bomber, crawls out of the sea one night and cuts the throat of a German sentry.Big mistake.Jersey is under Nazi occupation, and the lives of its inhabitants depend on an uneasy co-existence with their oppressors. Though Kramer's motives were entirely patriotic, to the islanders he presents a terrifying risk to their very survival.But to Kramer, a man governed by an overriding sense of duty, this s...

Rock Springs, Kentucky. A backwater miles from civilisation, but so far upstream that the riverboats can go no further, and with plenty of farmland there for the taking.Among the pioneers who choose to build their homes here are the Hudds and the Killicks, two families destined to spend the next century despising one another.Kentucky Blues is a powerful, unsentimental depiction of life through several generations, widely considered to be Robinson's most ambitious w...