As CF Lifers will know by now, I often like to commend skillful writing here on Ye Aulde Colde Furye Blogge when I run across it, if only because I enjoy it so much my own self. Also well-known is my fondness for military history/historical fiction, which is where this post comes in.
I’ve lately been reading one called Wings Over Summer, a sort of prequel which covers the lives—and deaths—of the Spitfire pilots serving in the RAF’s (fictional) 646 Fighter Squadron during the Battle of Britain, with the second (really, the first) volume of the two-part series recounting their exploits during the Siege of Malta. The author, a chappie yclept Ron Powell, definitely has some writerly chops, as this extremely amusing excerpt confirms.
Since I couldn’t find a way to simply C&P the above passage in the Kindle Unlimited application, I had to screen-cap the above passage in two parts, hence the size discrepancy. But still: great stuff, no? A little biographical info on the author:
After 32 years in the Royal Air Force, from which he retired as a Group Captain (full Colonel) pilot commanding the first stage of flying training for the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, Ron moved to south Wales to pursue his long held ambition of becoming a writer. Since then, he has written an illustrated history of events in the skies above Britain in the summer of 1940, The Battle of Britain, Hitler’s First Bloody Nose; an acclaimed novel, Wings Over Summer, set in the same period; a sequel, Wings Over Malta; and two volumes of memoir, Shropshire Blue: A Shropshire Lad in the RAF, the first, Preparation For Flight, about growing up on the English/Welsh border and his early years in the RAF, including working on Vulcan nuclear bombers on a Cold War air base, the second, On The Buffet, about his RAF pilot training. He has also written numerous short stories and articles and gives talks on a range of topics, including the Battle of Britain.
There’s also a website with more on Group Captain Powell’s life and RAF career, perusable here.
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I read Wings Over Summer several years ago, 2015/16 I think. I rather liked it and thought the writing was excellent. Not sure why I din’t read the others, but thanks for the reminder.
“yclept” Now I have seen that used in a really long time 🙂
EDIT by SteveF because I have the power to change spelling
OK beats me why I can’t edit that one for spelling errors 🙂
Hm. Try mousing over the lower-right corner of the comment box, a little gear-icon should pop up. Click that, and you should be in. Or could be I need to set you up with admin privileges before that’ll work, I dunno. Give it a try and holla back…
That’s how I always do it. I edited the comment, but it wouldn’t save it for some reason. Just one of the oddballs of computer land.
It normally works fine. I’ll try it here again…
Beats me. I posted comments in the daily just to get out of this thread and when I edit those it pops up a big red banner saying I’m posting too fast 🙂
Anyway, don’t worry about it for now. If it doesn’t go away on its own well deal with it then. It’s always worked fine in the past.