The Website of Novelist and Rugby Pundit
                                 Derek Robinson
 
                                     
CREDIT CRUNCH SPECIAL - all three Royal Flying Corps novels for £25, including p&p. That's in the UK. Outside UK - £30 inc. p&p. 
Times are hard, so I'm offering my RFC trilogy (War Story, Hornet's Sting, Goshawk Squadron) for the price of Hornet's Sting alone.  Pay me by sterling cheque or by PayPal - details below.  Hornet's Sting is hardback size, softback cover; the other two are pocketsize.  Three WW1 flying novels for 25 quid - just what you want for a wet summer!
Breaking News!
  The cost of sending airmail packages has gone up again. For example, airmailing the RFC trilogy to the US now costs £15.  So  -  in future, orders from outside the UK will go surface mail.  If you want airmail, send me an
email 
here and we'll work out a deal.    
                                                            
Quick Links to:  About Derek Robinson     Better Rugby Refereeing        Readers Write              
RFC Books    RAF Books    Luis Cabrillo Books    Other Novels    Bristol Books   All Books Displayed

New novel: 'Hullo Russia, Goodbye England'
   It's no joke
being a Vulcan bomber pilot when the Cold War turns hot.
Reviews:
The first commercial review of HRGE, by Nicholas Lezard of the UK's Guardian
 newspaper, appeared  on the 18th of April.
  
See it here.

"WAR CRACKER IN FROM THE COLD" was the  News of the World's headline  for Matthew Nixson's review of 'Hullo Russia' on 10th May.   See it 
here .
 
 hrge

Silk and the Vulcan were made for each other. "Now see how she climbs," the instructor said.  He stood the Vulcan on its tail and they went up as if somebody up there was hauling them in, hand over fist.





This brand new novel is on sale in a paperback format. The limited first edition of 100 copies has sold out,  but the book has been reprinted, and signed copies are available. Copies can be obtained only from the author.

  For buyers in the U.K. it costs £15, which includes first-class postage.  Make your cheque payable to:
Derek  Robinson and send it to him at:
                 Shapland House  
                 Somerset Street  
                 Kingsdown  
                 Bristol BS2 8LZ  
Remember to include your address, clearly written.  
                       
                           Or pay by PayPal
                                  
paypal
For buyers outside the U.K., it costs £20, which includes airmail postage.  The best way to buy is by PayPal.  Derek Robinson has a PayPal Business Account.  Email him here saying how many books you want, and he will raise a PayPal Payment Request.  
            See Paying by PayPal panel  below.

 



Hornet’s Sting is now on sale
     in a limited edition of 100 copies,
        each numbered and signed.    
                         
 PRICE IN U.K-  £25 per copy, including p&p  
   
Send your sterling cheque, payable to Derek Robinson, to me at:
    Shapland House, Somerset Street, Bristol  BS2 8LZ, England
- and of course I'll need your address. 

 
PRICE OUTSIDE U.K.  £30 per copy, inc. airmail p&p.
 (That’s the U.S. and Canada and the rest of the world)
Payment  by  PayPal is usually the best option - see below.
     
                   Any queries, please email me here.   
Hornet's new cvr

paypalPaying by PayPal        Whether or not you are in the UK, the simplest and quickest way to buy either of the books above, or any other of my books (see below), is by crediting my PayPal business account.

You don't need to use a personal PayPal account.  All you need is a credit card. Just send me an email  here, telling me what you want.  I'll need to know if you're outside the UK.

Good news for US customers - the UK pound has fallen fast against the US dollar.   That means 'Hornet's Sting' now costs approximately $45.  A few months ago it was $60.  And 'Hullo Russia, Goodbye England' is $30, down from $40.

Other Derek Robinson books available by mail order:

The Flying  Corps Trilogy (WW1) -
                          'War Story' (344 pp)  Hardback £20   Paperback £10
                          'Hornet's Sting' - see details above.
                          'Goshawk Squadron'  - the Paperback is in print in the UK.
                                                                      -  Elsewhere:  £15 from me.
The Royal Air Force Trilogy (WW2) -
                          'Piece of Cake' (569 pp) Hardback £30    Paperback £15
                          'A Good Clean  Fight' - (453 pp) Hardback £25 (a few only)
                          ' Damned Good Show' - Sorry - all sold.  May reprint  soon.
 
Other titles:
 'Kramer's War' and 'Kentucky Blues'  are out of print and I  have no spares.
  My non-flying series about Luis Cabrillo (WW2 double agent and con artist)
  began with 'The Eldorado Network' - I have  spares at £25 Hardback and
  £15 Paperback. A further sequel is emerging from the typewriter.
   

Payment: by Sterling cheque to the address above in the Hornet's Sting panel, or
if you are outside the U.K.  I suggest you use PayPal - see the panel after Hornet's Sting.
                                          
Any queries, please email me here.
           

   Readers Write #3   12th June 09

        Vulcan feedback,
                               the deaded P tube,
                                             and the Snow White trick.   

Thomas Keneally is a very good researcher, By chance, he met the owner of a Californian leather-goods shop who was one of the Polish Jews rescued from the German death camps by Oskar Schindler. After that, Keneally worked hard to find the facts that became Schindler's Ark, which became the film Schindler's List. He could have written another Holocaust history. Instead, he wrote his book as fiction - not because he wasn't sure of the truth, but because he didn't want it to end up on the packed shelves of Holocaust volumes. Keneally wanted his story to be read by people who never look at World War Two histories. And he succeeded.

I think I know how he feels. I parted company with one publisher because my fiction always ended up in the Military History section of the shop. That wasn't why I wrote it. I wrote it for the Keneally reason, so that people might get an idea of what war is like at the sharp end. Not the daily scores in, say, air combat in the desert war (which is how military historians tend to see the battle) but how a fighter squadron lives, kills and dies in the sand, flies and blood of the Western Desert. A Good Clean Fight is good history; I researched it thoroughly. But it takes you where the military histories never go. I hope that's true of all my flying stuff.

Including the latest, Hullo Russia, Goodbye England. I've had some feedback from former Vulcan pilots and groundcrew. Chris in London flew Vulcans and said: "It was a good read, and took me back." Brad in Lincoln said, "Have just finished it. Grand read!" Having been front-line ground crew for 15 years, he noticed a couple of places where I slightly bent the truth - for instance, each Vulcan airbase was either a Blue Steel or a bomb station, but not both. My mistake.

And here's another detail I might have included: "There is no mention of the dreaded P Tube, a rubber bladder with a fitted chrome receptacle into which you could pee, if you really had to. After a sortie, each crew member emptied their own, normally at the side of the Crew Chief's hut on the pan." I suspect that's the kind of info my readers like to know. Some people thought Baggy Bletchley bought it in a portable loo at the end of Piece of Cake, and were pleasantly surprised to meet him again in Hullo Russia. He survived Cake, and A Good Clean Fight; he may surface again.

I was happy that Brad confirmed the problems of arming a Vulcan with the Blue Steel missile. The fuel (HTP) was so toxic that any groundcrew splashed with it had to dive into a nearby plunge bath instantly, or his clothing caught fire. And loading the missile meant 230 gold studs (the Butt Connector) made perfect contact; if not, download and start again. An exercise involving Blue Steel began hours before take-off. A far cry from the famous 'four-minute warning' of an attack.

 Peter, a former Vulcan captain now in France, got the book and wrote: "I sat in a deckchair at the week-end and I pretty much read it straight through. I think that says a great deal, and I found it a good read. The story perhaps stretched the imagination a little in some areas. Certainly our hero Silk could not have been disposed of quite so quickly." Well, endings are often the most difficult part. Peter adds that he joined the Vulcan OCU eight years after Silk. By then, the aircraft was a truly low-level machine, Blue Steel had long gone, and so had the WW2 veterans in the aircrew. (Maybe some of the mindset of those who had bombed German cities went with them.) But Peter also read Piece of Cake. "I think you have caught the repartee and banter of aircrew magnificently," he says. "My first Vulcan squadron used the Snow White party trick." (That's the one with everyone in line astern, marching on their knees, arms folded, singing 'Hey Ho!' - it's in Cake, page 75.) "With 55 aircrew on the squadron, there were sometimes more than seven dwarfs!"

Thanks to all who wrote.  And welcome to several public libraries who have bought copies, including Enfield (in London), Hartlepool, North Yorkshire, Dorset and Wrexham.  Glad to have you on board.                                      Derek Robinson

 Previous Readers Write:   #1  (March 09)   #2 (May  09)
                                                              


                  Luis Cabrillo Rides Again
 
Steve in Florida writes that my (non-flying) novel, The Eldorado Network, "caused me physical pain from laughing."  Well, stand by with the Extra-Strength Anadin, because here comes a pair of sequels. Red Rag Blues came out in hardback a few years back but never made it into paperback;  so I'm putting that right. Quite soon now, it will be available in hardback size but soft covers for £15 plus p&p, from a company who operate Print On Demand.  You buy a copy online from them, not from me. Very straightforward.  Watch this space.
Who is this man Cabrillo?  In Eldorado he was a double-agent, deceiving the German intelligence network in the Hitler war, supplying phoney facts for the Allies.  (Based on a real man, who simultaneously won the Iron Cross and the M.B.E., which speaks for itself.)  Cabrillo made a fortune, the war ended, he went to Venezuela, spent it all, so he moved to America, home of his WW2 sidekick Julie Conroy, a corker of a New Yorker. How is Cabrillo to make money? By being a con artist, of course. How else?  But who to con? Well, it's 1953 and Senator Joe McCarthy is telling America there's a Red under every bed. Put two cons together and you've got Red Rag Blues. Chuck in the FBI, MI5, CIA and the Mafia, and bullets start to fly. The Observer liked it. "Dialogue beyond compare," it said. "Hits the ground wisecracking on the first page and is still at it, without any sign of flagging, at the novel's close." 
And when you've finished RRB, I've got another sequel ready to go.  When the East Coast gets too hot for Cabrillo and Conroy, they move to LA.  Has our boy gone too far?  It's all in Operation Bamboozle.  Out soon.
                                       
                                              Derek Robinson - Who He?

I am an author, English, who has cornered the market in flying novels - three about the Royal Flying corps in WW1, three about the RAF in WW2 . Best known is Goshawk Squadron, which would have won the Booker Prize in 1971 if Saul Bellow, one of the judges, had  had his way.  "The most readable novel of the year," Nina Bawden said in the Daily Telegraph.  "I laughed aloud several times, and was in the end reduced to tears."

My other fiction hits other targets.  As well as a trilogy - soon to be a quartet (see panel above) - about Luis Cabrillo, it includes Kentucky Blues, a sprawling  western in which everyone - blacks and whites - gets the blues.  "A wonderful novel," said the Daily Telegraph, "full of hilarious and thought-provoking incident." - and not an aeroplane in sight. 

 I'm told these novels reveal a streak of black humour and a certain debunking of the myths of war, plus what Paul Scott called "a narrative gift that sets up the hackles of involvement".  The American critic Paul Fussell commented, "I defy the reader to put the book down once Robinson has got him into the air." 

Biography

 A policeman's son from a council estate, I reckon I was born lucky.  I had parents who read books, a public library on the corner, and the 1944 Education Act (State Scholarships for bright lads).  I crossed the class barrier by going to Cambridge, got a degree in history, and  learned to write boringly. Stints in advertising in London and New York changed all that.  In 1966 I went to Portugal, wrote two unpublishable novels, returned to England flat broke, married, and finally got it right with Goshawk Squadron, which bought enough time to write the next ripping yarn.

 I've also done a lot of broadcasting, starting in the 70s with radio, when editing a tape meant brisk work with a razor blade, moving on to TV in the 80s, when Autocue was new and not always reliable, so that a 60-second piece to camera tested the memory and the nerves.  I made a few dozen documentaries and  did a ton of rugby commentary.  I also chaired the first-ever Radio 4 phone-in, which used big-name studio guests (Robert Mugabe was the first), and created and presented a Radio 2 show called  Hit List that was an inverted Desert Island Discs - six bits of music you never want to hear again.  Very funny, and why the BBC dropped it is beyond understanding.  As for pastimes, I was a grassroots rugby referee for 30 years, and still play more squash than my friends, or my knees, think wise.  All of which is fine and good, but what really matters are the books.  The rest is just ink, sweat and taxes.                 Back to top of page

Click here to see all  my books displayed in topic groups. 
 or click on an individual title:  
Goshawk Squadron  War Story Hornet's Sting  Piece of Cake,  A Good Clean Fight  Damned Good Show  Invasion 1940  Hullo Russia, Goodbye England   The Eldorado Network Artillery of Lies  Red Rag Blues  Kramer's War, Kentucky Blues, Rotten With HonourBetter Rugby Refereeing  Rugby - A Player's Guide  to the Laws Run With the BallA Darker Side of Bristol, A Load of Old Bristle, Sick Sentries of Bristle

                       
                                  Rights and Opportunities
Copyright
I own all rights - literary, dramatic, cinema, television radio, DVD and the rest - to all my books, with one exception.  In 1971 Sam Goldwyn Jr bought the movie rights to Goshawk Squadron.  So far, no movie. Make him an offer.  Who knows, he might sell.  For everything else, make me an offer.  I'm definitely interested.
Opportunities
Book reviewers often remark on the  suitability of my books for filming.  So far, one has made it to the screen:  in 1988 Piece of Cake became a 6-part TV series.  Got a big audience, was shown worldwide, now available on DVD.  See for yourself, then read the book.  I suppose I'm biased, but some of my titles seem to me to be tailormade for the screen.  Kramer's War is set on the  photogenic island of Jersey, where many German fortifications still survive more or less intact.  All the action in A Good Clean Fight takes place in the North African desert (sand is cheap, and a few WW2 Tomahawk fighters still exist).  The Eldorado Network is a  story of war set in neutral Madrid and Lisbon:  no actual battles, but the conflict is  endless.  Kentucky Blues, "a sprawling, sometimes tragic portrait of a nation being rocked by enormous change", would seem to me to have all the  makings of a TV mini-series.  And the latest yarn, Red Rag Blues, is a bleakly comic scam in the best Hollywood tradition.  There you have it - plot, characters, dialogue all exist.  Over to you, whoever you are.     Derek Robinson
Contact      
I welcome comments and views about my books, though as a working writer I can't guarantee to have sufficient time to  answer everyone.   Click here to send me an email.

 Click any group heading to see  details.
           
The RFC Trilogy (WW1)
                hrge
                   The RAF Quintet (WW2)
              
The Double Agent Trilogy
                            
Other Novels
       New!
          
Rugby Books

                   
Bristol Books

Availability of the books.
This varies from title to title. High Street booksellers will be able to tell you the current position about
any particular  book, or you could try the following websites, which are useful for tracking down both
 new and second-hand copies.

Amazon UK   Amazon USA      Fantastic Fiction    Foyle's

Other websites you may find of interest:
eRugbyNews.com    Wikipedia         IMDB      The Aerodrome Forum      LibraryThing.com

                           Major books and original publication dates:
1971      Goshawk Squadron         1973      Rotten with Honour        1977      Kramer's War      
1979      The Eldorado Network     1983      Piece of Cake                1987      War Story      
1991      Artillery of Lies                1993      A Good Clean Fight       1999      Hornet's Sting  
2002      Damned Good Show        2002     Kentucky Blues              2005     Invasion 1940
2005      Red Rag Blues                 2008     Hullo Russia, Goodbye England
                                                                       Back to top of page