They were the young and the brave. In the high summer of 1940, some boys in blue uniforms, in a sky yet more blinding blue, took on a plague and defeated it. The plague was Nazism.
Like Henry V’s men at Agincourt, The Few —as Churchill unforgettably tagged the pilots of RAF Fighter Command—were outnumbered, but never outfought. Like Hal’s soldiers in that muddy, storied French field, the fighter boys, too, had the benefit of British technology. Henry’s comrades-in-arms toted the longbow; in the sunlit skies over England in 1940, above the immemorial patchwork fields, the ancient churches, the slumbering villages and the determined towns, the magnificent boys of the RAF piloted machines of equal magnificence. Some sat behind the joystick of the Hawker Hurricane, a fine and steady gun platform. Others, in the Battle of Britain, had the fortune, had history’s touch on the shoulder, to fly the Supermarine Spitfire.
The Spitfire was technology. It was art. It was Mars in a sleek, all-metal monocoque with elegant, elliptical wings. The Spitfire made everyone who sat in the aircraft’s tiny cockpit feel great, feel godly.
One did not merely get into a Spitfire. One put a Spitfire on. Dressed in it. The late flying ace Group Capt Wilfrid Duncan Smith knew this: ‘On taking over 64 Squadron, one of the first things I impressed on my pilots was that you did not “strap yourself in”, you “buckled the Spitfire on”, like girding on armour in days of old.’
Denne historien er fra September 09, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 09, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.