Author:R.A. Saville-Sneath
When this book was first published in 1941, aircraft recognition was far more than just a pleasant pastime; it was often a matter of life and death…
This classic text provides a definitive catalogue of the aeroplanes, enemy and friendly, seen over British skies during the Second World War. R.A. Saville-Sneath set out to produce a handy classification guide, with many diagrams, a full glossary and some useful mnemonics, showing how each type of aircraft could be identified quickly and easily. The basic structures, tail units, positions of the wings and engines, and even the sounds made by the different planes, form part of the essential 'vocabulary' for distinguishing Albacores and Ansons, Beauforts and Blenheims, Heinkels, Hurricanes and Junkers, Messerschmitts and Moths, Spitfires and Wellingtons. For anyone interested in aviation the book provides a mine of information about a golden age. For those who lived through one of the most glorious episodes in the history of combat it will prove vividly evocative of those extraordinary days.
A blow-by-blow account of one of our greatest military triumphs ... Michael Jones has reconstructed the battle in fascinating detail.
—— Daily ExpressA convincing narrative of how and why Henry V turned his army into a band of brothers and won Agincourt against all odds.
—— Tim ClaytonFascinating ... with eye-witness accounts from both sides, at every stage of the battle, this amounts to a brilliant history book’
—— Historical Novel SocietyIn his hour-by-hour account of the battle Michael Jones has created a vivid evocation
—— Daily MailJones succeeds admirably in presenting an absorbing and thorough account of this most iconic of medieval engagements ... accessible and authoritative.
—— BBC History MagazineAn immensely detailed yet highly compelling narrative of the battle
—— WarfareScurr confidently walks an imaginative life between historical fact and fiction. Her Aubrey – curious yet self-effacing- is a very English hero
—— Sunday TimesScurr’s judgment and scholarship in constructing Aubrey’s own account of events are so flawless that she allows us almost to forget that she is there
—— Alexandra Harris , GuardianAn extraordinarily original piece of biography… gripping, moving, and beautifully rendered
—— Neel Mukherjee , New StatesmanAnother writer of brief lives, Lytton Strachey, feared that in our modern civilization John Aubrey would 'never come into existence again'. But that is exactly what he does in Ruth Scurr's absorbing and imaginative biography. In these pages his purchase on posterity returns with all his ingenious visions and impulses. Scurr is no less a pioneer biographer than Aubrey himself.
—— Michael HolroydIt is a bold and brilliant experiment, but it suits the fragmentary nature of Aubrey's work and life.
—— Andrew Brown , Sunday TelegraphIn a year that has seen the publication of Ruth Scurr's John Aubrey: My Own Life, it's hard not to wonder...why everyone else bothers. Oh, you think, it's because they started writing their books when the earth was still flat... Scurr's book alters our perception of the territory. You would be sceptical if you weren't awestruck: Aubrey's voice is exceptional, and Scurr's fragmentary form is perfectly suited to her subject's magpie preoccupations.
—— Gaby Wood , Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year[A] moving and delicate book
—— Frances Wilson , New StatesmanThis year saw one of the most audacious biographies I can remember reading: Ruth Scurr's John Aubrey: My Own Life... What we are presented with is a wonderful artificial composite: a fascinating patchwork made up of extracts from Aubrey's notebooks, journals and letters, chronologically rearranged with consummate editorial and novelistic artfulness by Scurr. The result is haunting, memorable and, in the field of non-fiction, unprecedented.
—— William Boyd , TLS, Books of the YearScurr wrote the biography Aubrey didn't write - Aubrey's own - in a biographical form that is unique, new and gripping
—— AS Byatt , TLS, Books of the YearFor me, the academic historian, Scurr’s experimental “act of scholarly imagination” has already modified significantly my own historical understanding
—— Lisa Jardine , Financial TimesThe marriage of [Aubrey’s] words and Scurr’s is so smoothly achieved that I have no idea where one leaves off and the other intervenes
—— Allan Massie , ScotsmanScurr’s imaginative feat of retrieval has produced a perfect book for dipping into when you want a taste of what it was like to be alive in the 17th century
—— John Carey , Sunday TimesIt is a testament to [Scurr’s] skill that you quickly stop thinking about technique and instead slip happily into the company of the character she has created. The wealth of research and the seams between imagination and reality disappear from view. This is truly selfless biography
—— Daisy Hay, 5 stars , Daily TelegraphA game-changer in the world of biography
—— Mary Beard , GuardianA delightful read about the ebb and flow of thoughts in one extraordinary man’s mind
—— Claire Harman , Evening StandardDrawing on [Aubrey’s] manuscripts and letters, [Ruth Scurr] has fashioned, as chronologically as possible, an autobiography in the form of the diary that Aubrey never wrote. It fits him perfectly… Ms Scurr has done him proud
—— The EconomistAubrey was a delightful, self-deprecating man ... A conventional biography of Aubrey could easily have become a portrait of the time through which he had lived, allowing the man himself to be overshadowed ... Instead, Ruth Scurr has invented the diary Aubrey might have written, incorporating his own chaotic, sometimes scrappy literary remains to form a continuous narrative. ... lucky him to have been accorded a biography as whimsical as his own self
—— Clive Aslet , Country LifeScurr’s book illuminates and poignantly captures the voice of a man more often a “ghostly record keeper” in his own writing
—— Carl Wilkinson , Financial TimesJohn Aubrey brilliantly reconfigures the art of biography
—— David Abulafia , Times Higher EducationBold and imaginative recreation of the diary of the 17th-century antiquary. It shows how close a scrupulous and unselfregarding biographer can come to the savour of a life
—— Graham Robb , SpectatorA genuinely remarkable work of biographical innovation.
—— Stuart Kelly , TLS, Books of the YearI’d like to reread Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey every Christmas for at least the next five years: I love being between its humane pages, which celebrate both scholarly companionship and deep feeling for the past
—— Alexandra Harris , GuardianRuth Scurr’s innovative take on biography has an immediacy that brings the 17th century alive
—— Penelope Lively , GuardianAnyone who has not read Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey can have a splendid time reading it this summer. Scurr has invented an autobiography the great biographer never wrote, using his notes, letters, observations – and the result is gripping
—— AS Byatt , GuardianA triumph, capturing the landscape and the history of the time, and Aubrey’s cadence.
—— Daily TelegraphA brilliantly readable portrait in diary form. Idiosyncratic, playful and intensely curious, it is the life story Aubrey himself might have written.
—— Jane Shilling , Daily MailScurr knows her subject inside out.
—— Simon Shaw , Mail on SundayThe diligent Scurr has evidence to support everything… Learning about him is to learn more about his world than his modest personality, but Scurr helps us feel his pain at the iconoclasm and destruction wrought by the Puritans without resorting to overwrought language.
—— Nicholas Lezard , GuardianAcclaimed and ingeniously conceived semi-fictionalised autobiography… Scurr’s greatest achievement is to bring both Aubrey and his world alive in detail that feels simultaneously otherworldly and a mirror of our own age… It’s hard to think of a biographical work in recent years that has been so bold and so wholly successful.
—— Alexander Larman , Observer