Previously in Readers Write...

 #1  March 09    News from the author, now and then.

       One of the rewards of self-publishing is the number of messages I get from people who read my books.  Here are some of their comments.  First names only, for obvious reasons.  

Edward, in London, was one of the first to get hold of the latest novel, Hullo Russia, Goodbye England, and said:  “I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought the denouement  -  Silk’s final flight in the Vulcan  -   was particularly good.  You fooled this reader nicely.”   Sean in Lancashire simply said:  “Damn splendid book.”   Steve, in Nottingham, welcomed “the long-awaited reappearance of my favourite cussed intelligence officer.”  That must be Skull.  Chris, in Victoria, Australia, was still reading HRGE when he said he was “enjoying my copy immensely. It’s always nice to spend time with old friends like Skull (possibly my favourite character in any of your books) and Silk… the appearance of Baggy Bletchley was a treat too.” And John, in New York State, said:  “I loved every page of it.”  

Every new novel is a gamble - for you as well as for me.  No book pleases everyone, and any author who expects it to happen is doomed to disappointment.  So I was neither surprised nor dismayed when Graham in Essex sent me a thoughtful review which mentions “two minor disappointments.  First, I wished the book were longer - it all seemed over very quickly.  Secondly, there were no new major characters to engage us,  which reinforces the feeling that this is something of a tailpiece to earlier books.”   Which raises the question: how long should a novel be?  Answer:  the story itself makes that decision.  When it reaches its end, the book is complete.  Piece of Cake made 569 pages in hardback, while Goshawk Squadron made only 218.  Hullo Russia runs to 264 pages.  Different stories, different lengths. 

I’m happy to say that Graham enjoyed Hullo Russia.  He says:  “the meeting of Robinson’s cool approach and sardonic humour with the lunacy of nuclear deterrence and Mutually Assured Destruction proves to be a marriage made in heaven.”   I like his thumbnail profiles.  Of Silk: “the man you meet in a bar, a charmer and funny too… Silk is running out of places to do the only thing he knows and enjoys.  For me, he resembles one of Sam Peckinpah’s heroes, increasingly lost as the West is pacified and tidied up.”  About Skull:  “the good man in a bad trade. The man you love to have on your team, clever and thoughtful - but he never knows when to shut up.  Because there is no combat in this novel and the enemy is totally unseen, Skull fulfills that role and acts as the grit in the plot which gives us the pearls.”   Nicely put.  

Other books are others’ favourites. Mark, in Liverpool, reckons Piece of Cake is my best WW2/RAF book - he’s re-read it so often, he’s on his third paperback copy.  (His brother’s vote goes to Damned Good Show.) Likewise C.M.G., in the Borders,  who tells me he’s been known to finish reading the ending and immediately start again at the beginning  -  and finding something new every time.  Gordon, in Lanarkshire, got so much out of Hornet’s Sting that he’s “experiencing symptoms of bereavement and wondering if there’s any chance you’ll write another RFC novel?”  Well, nothing’s impossible;  but my  new novel,  out later this year, is Operation Bamboozle,  yet another in the Luis Cabrillo series which began with The Eldorado Network  -  of which Steve in Florida writes: “It caused me physical pain from laughing.”  But his favourite remains Goshawk Squadron.  

Many thanks to you all. 

Derek Robinson          Return to Homepage

#2  May 09

Robbery in the Library, Gender Confusion, and a Dog Named 'Moggy'.    

   Listen, I just write the books.  Who knows where they end up? I've had mail from Norwegians on oil platforms,  and from a pilot who flies jumbos for a South Pacific airline,  and from Jim in Alberta where it's often 30 or 40 below.  I'm told the U.S. Marines in Iraq enjoy my WW2 desert story,  A Good Clean Fight.   Nothing surprises me, not even the email from Tim in Australia that began:  "The first book I stole was Piece of Cake."  He nicked it from the school library when he was 16.  "I probably read it another six or seven times before it fell apart."  By then he was old enough to pay for books, so he bought another copy.  Should have bought two, and given the other to the library. 
 
   So I don't know where my books end up, and I don't know how the reader feels at the time.  For instance, Tony in Ireland has read the RFC and the RAF trilogies.  "I was working in Eastern Europe," he says, "and they saw me through some hairy times"  -  which sets the imagination working.  And Peter in Somerset recalls a very rough patch when he was ill.  "I want to thank you for helping me recover,"  he says,  and he names in particular Hornet's Sting, Piece of Cake and Damned Good Show  -   "so good, so entertaining and so well written that I forgot how ill I was and simply enjoyed the pleasure of the stories."   I had never thought of the novel as therapy;  but when the book takes you out of yourself and lifts you to somewhere you would otherwise never go,  that journey might well do you a power of good. 
 
   These thoughts are prompted by the steady stream of letters (and cheques or PayPal requests) that followed Nicholas  Lezard's corker of a review of Hullo Russia, Goodbye England in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago. David in Maryland ordered a copy and wrote that he came across Goshawk Squadron over 35 years ago and still re-reads it, along with other yarns of mine.  Helen in Dublin said she 'enjoyed' my writing, then thought that 'appreciated' was a better word, and finally upgraded that to 'enthralled'. W.B.T. in Southampton has read and re-read all my books, and (he says) so has his wife, which is pleasing.  Paul in Dublin ranks me as "one of 3 or 4 authors all of whose work I own";  and Matt in London "recently read Goshawk Squadron on my honeymoon and absolutely loved it."  (Let's hope that marks the start of a long relationship.)   And many more letters, saying more of the same, including the nice lady in Wales who addressed me as 'Dear Sir or Madam'. 
 
  That's got the Gender Confusion out of the way.  Now for the dog named Moggy.  Jack in Alabama liked Kentucky Blues, so he moved on to Piece of Cake  and writes that he thought the characters "were very well-drawn, with CH3,  Fanny, Flash, Skull and Moggy being stand-outs... In fact, I'd place Moggy as one of the best-drawn characters in war literature ever."  So when Jack's girlfriend gave him a cocker spaniel for Christmas, he named the dog 'Moggy'.  Didn't go down well.  "God, how people bitched and complained!" he  tells me. The nickname  means nothing in the States.  Jack travels a lot.  His girlfriend took  care of  Moggy in his absence and rapidly renamed him 'Tucker'.   "But," Jack adds, "for a few short days, Pilot Officer Cattermole lived on in the form of a rambunctious little black dog."  Nice tribute, Jack. Can't think of anything better. 

     Some ex-Vulcan pilots and groundcrew also bought copies of Hullo Russia. Next time I'll write about that.  They all say they finished the book,  sometimes reading it non-stop,  which can't be bad.
 

Derek Robinson          Return to Homepage

#3  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      Return to Homepage

   Someone remarked that there are no heroes in my books.  Plenty of courage, no lack of sacrifice, a lot of death.  But heroes?  The word itself has been done to death.  I was in New York when US soldiers, marines and airmen returned from the First Gulf  War, nearly twenty years ago, and they got a tickertape reception.  New Yorkers called them all 'heroes', and many servicemen looked uncomfortable with the label.  In any army, for every frontline fighting man there are six or seven or even ten men behind  him, providing support.  Cooks, medics, dentists, truck drivers, guys organising supplies, keeping records, sending signals.  All doing essential jobs, but are they all heroes?  When everyone is heroic, the word has lost all meaning.  Let's save it for those who truly deserve it.  

   Moving on:  I've always believed that a good writer can write convincingly in any style that's needed  -  tabloid journalism, song lyrics,  boring bureaucratic jargon, whatever.  I'm sometimes disappointed by crime novelists who include chunks of newspaper  reporting for the sake of  plot.  They've obviously never worked on a paper. When I wrote 'The Eldorado Network'   -   which is  about a double agent reporting allegedly secret info   -    his style often had to be boring in order to be convincing.  The facts seemed more exciting because the writing was so dull.  I worked hard on that,  just as I did in 'A Good Clean Fight' where I wanted to quote the lyrics of a certain popular song.  (Good contrast with the bleak Libyan desert.)  Surprise, surprise:  UK copyright  lasts for 70 years after the death of the creator,  and those lyrics were still in copyright.  Rather than pay a fee (hey, writing is a business, remember), I wrote my own lyrics, of which I'm quietly proud.  You can sing them in the bath, if you wish:  

                              When you don't care... 

                              I'm bound in iron bands. 

                              When you don't care... 

                              I'm lost in desert sands. 

                              In this wilderness, with none but you to guide me, 

                              I'm in heaven with your tenderness beside me...  

And if you think any fool could have written that,  just try writing the next verse.  But don't steal my words.  They're my copyright now.   

   Fresh insights from readers' messages.  Anthony in London bought 'Hullo Russia...' and mentions what a pleasure it is "to find a novelist who is able to produce books that you can't put down  -  I finished 'Piece of Cake' in a few days and felt totally wrung out  by the sense of tension and fatigue you managed to sustain..."  By contrast, a different reaction from John,  somewhere in UK,  who  "read it again and again over a period of three years...I never, ever laughed out loud so many times. My wife thinks I'm mad, The humour is fantastic, and the deaths of the characters very emotional..."  Matthew in Ontario discovered 'Cake' when he was   14:  "I have read it dozens of times since then and still enjoy it immensely."  Indeed,  it has inspired him to write a Bomber Command novel.  And why not?  Kim, now a librarian, confesses to having borrowed a copy of 'Hornet's Sting' from a public library, told them it was lost (not true) but paid for it, and says: "I always enjoy recommending your work to fans of Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O'Brian, C.S. Forester,  etc. Absolute fantastic reads on all levels."  

   And Richard in North Yorkshire  -  another big fan  -  reckons that " 'Goshawk Squadron' should have won the Booker Prize." (I'll settle for the fact that it's still in print nearly 40 years later.)  Also from far-flung readers:  Neal in Houston, Texas says of 'Hullo Russia...':  "Well done, sir! You still have the gift for character and banter."  Mark in Adelaide, while ordering an armful of books, says:  "Thanks for years of entertainment!"   While Jarmo in Oulo, on the strength of reading the first 80 pages of War Story', wants a similar armful of what he calls my "delightful prose".   And Oulo, in case you're wondering, is in delightful Finland.  

My thanks to you all.  

Derek Robinson                   Return to Homepage

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Readers Write #7 November 09

 Viewers are smart,  readers are far-flung,   translations are rare

   The television adaptation of  Piece of Cake still attracts questions.  (It was first shown in 1988,  so if you're under 25, ask your parents.)  All five hour-long episodes are now available on DVD, at what strikes me (and I can be impartial because I sold the rights and so I don't make a penny from the DVD) as a very low price. If you can't find it locally, try Ian Allan Publishing  -  that's where I bought mine.  For a drama, the TV showing pulled in a big audience. I think the final episode attracted 13 million viewers in the UK,  and LWT sold the series around the world.  In the US it went out on Mobil Masterpiece Theatre, a much respected viewing slot.  And don't tell me they spell it 'Theater' over there.  Mobil called it 'Theatre', and I have the poster to prove it.  

Tim in Victoria, Australia was 12 at the time, watched Cake with his Mum, bet her that Moggy would survive, "which of course ultimately resulted in my having to make both our beds for a week."  This throws an interesting light on the novel and one reason why I think it keeps on getting re-read (and re-shown): it's the unpredictable nature of events.  A good story should surprise. I set out to tell the events of the Phoney War, the Battle for France and the Battle of Britain, just as they might have happened to one RAF fighter squadron.  All the research I did (and that was a lot) confirmed one thing: many pilots got killed, some in battle, some not, some by inexperience, some by sheer bad luck.  Flying was risky in those days.  On a typical fighter squadron, of those pilots who had begun the war, most would not be flying a year later. Sometimes none.  

This is the unpredictable element that keeps Piece of Cake on edge.  When the television series was being cast, I was pleased to see that I recognised hardly any names.  Viewers are smart.  They know that the star they meet in episode one is not going to be killed in episode two or three, and probably not at all  -  television has paid that actor a ton of money and it's not going to be wasted.  Nearly all the pilots in Piece of Cake were played by young unknown actors.  Some became better known later (Jeremy Northam, Nathaniel Parker) and Tom Burlinson had already made a name in Australia but not in Britain.  So viewers could never guess who would live and who would die.  Tim, aged 12, guessed wrongly,  and that both reflected the truth of the war and upheld the dramatic tension of the story.  Incidentally, I thought Neil Dudgeon, who played Moggy Cattermole, was excellent.  An RAF fighter pilot who actually led a squadron in the Battle of Britain read the book, saw the series, and wrote to me.  He had known men like Moggy,  and he summed him up very neatly:  "Bad for discipline, good for morale  -  every squadron should have one.  Just one." 

Other questions I get asked: (1) Did I write the screenplay? No, I didn't.  I'd put four hard years into the novel, and I was very happy when Leon Griffiths (who created Minder) wrote the screenplay. (2) The novel says Hurricanes, so why use Spitfires?  Very few Hurricanes survived, and none were aerobatic, so it was Spits or nothing.  (3) Did I like the TV version?  Well, naturally I pefer the book,  but it's a long story and if they'd shot the whole of the printed word, the series would never have ended. It's pretty good. The music is haunting.  I wish it were on CD. 

Back to readers write.  Among the more exotic  messages have been those from Bernice, who runs Crooked Timber Books in what sounds like a very rugged corner of Nova Scotia; Jarmo in Finland (ordering the RFC trilogy);  Anette in Sweden (ditto); plus Karen in Switzerland (Hornet's Sting), Jules in Holland, Charles in Prague and Werner in Vienna  (all for Hullo Russia, Goodbye England).  

Which prompts two thoughts.  First:  that I'm lucky to write in English, a global language. When an Egyptian airliner talks to Bulgarian air traffic control, they talk in English.   I'm sure Finland is a delightful country, but if I'd been born there, writing in Finnish would not have made my career any easier.  And my second thought is that there are translations of my work sitting on my shelves that might make an unusual gift if you have a friend in another country.   I have copies of Goshawk Squadron in French (Les Abattoirs du Ciel), in Spanish (Escadrilla Azur), and in Dutch (Het Havik Squadron).  There's The Eldorado Network in Spanish (El Spia Dorado) and in Dutch (Het Eldorado Netwerk);  and Kramer's War in Finnish (Luutnantti Kramerin Sota) and in what may be Belgian but is probably Dutch (Kramer's Oorlog).   I've even got  Polish versions of A Good Clean Fight (Pustynny Ogien), and of The Eldorado Network (Siatka Eldorado) and of Artillery of Lies (Artyleria Klamstw).  If you're interested, email me and we'll take it from there.

 My thanks to all who have written.  

Derek Robinson                   Return to Homepage

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Readers Write #8 December 09

Rumblings in Cornwall, the Forgotten War,  and three helpings of 'Cake'

I sense a smouldering impatience in Cornwall.  K.M.D. of St Ives writes to say how much he's enjoyed my previous books, especially the RFC/RAF trilogies.  'Damned Good Show' meant much to him because his father-in-law was in Bomber Command in WW2, got shot down in a Wellington, spent four years in Stalag Luft III, and then in the 1950s  instructed at RAF Finningley, a V-Bomber base.  Which is why K.M.D. particularly wanted to read 'Hullo Russia, Goodbye England'  -  it echoes much of his father-in-law's experience.   

But then he adds:  "I've been disappointed that there aren't more of your RAF books. After all, there's still a lot of WW2 left for Hornet Squadron after 'A Good Clean Fight', and there's also Korea, Suez etc."  

Well, I wish I could oblige. The money would be nice. I see other writers who, year after year, produce a succession of novels that play variations on the same tune, and a small voice inside me says: Why don't you do that?  Dick Francis writes a horse-racing novel a year. His fans love him.  Write an RAF novel a year and your fans will love you.  Why not? And a loud voice inside me says: Because you'll be bored rigid. Even the great Conan Doyle grew to loath Sherlock Holmes and tried to kill him off.  His fans wouldn't wear it and Doyle went back to grinding out more variations on a tune that must have made him want to throttle someone. If not Holmes, then Watson.  Or Inspector Lestrade. Or Mrs Hudson..  Or, ideally, the whole gang.  

I'm not in the grinding-out business. I write novels because I find an idea that strikes me as different, even surprising. I try to write a story that I enjoy  -  something fresh and unusual, maybe something that upsets what most people think they already know. Every novel is a gamble. I like risk.  So I can't do what K.M.D. of St Ives suggests,  which is to put Hornet Squadron into Suez or Korea simply because those wars happened.  I need an idea as well, a hook to hang the story on.  

One of the hooks I found, and used in 'Damned Good Show', is the forgotten war waged by Bomber Command from  the outbreak of war to 1941/2.  Say 'Bomber Command' to most people and they think of Lancasters flattening German cities.  But the Lancs weren't much seen on ops until mid-1942,  and not in large numbers until 1943.  Take the Thousand-Bomber Raid on Cologne on 30th May 1942;  only 73 Lancs took part in that, as compared with 79 Hampdens,  131 Halifaxes and 602 Wellingtons  (plus others). In fact, Bomber Command's first operation was on the very day that war was declared, 3rd September 1939.  During the next couple of years, the Command learned how (and how not) to take the battle to the enemy homeland. 

So I was very pleased to hear from someone who was there at the start. Lawrence Wheatley in Bude, Cornwall. He qualified as an Air Observer (soon to be renamed Navigator) in summer 1939,  and joined 'B' Flight of 144 Squadron. The squadron  flew Hampdens, a compact twin-engine bomber that plays a big part in 'Damned Good Show'.  Lawrence suffered from chronic air-sickness and was grounded by the medics, which almost certainly saved his life, because on 29 September 1939 'B' Flight was searching for targets north of Heligoland and ran into German fighters. All five Hampdens were shot down. Soon people were calling it the 'Phoney War'.  It was real enough for the RAF.  Throughout WW2, Bomber Command losses were heavy. Of the 48 men who completed Lawrence's Air Observer course, 28 died in action or in flying accidents.

Lawrence said he's enjoying D.G.S., "though slightly disappointed" that it's centred on the officers "and little is said about the Sergeants' Mess where the majority of the crew would live."  It's a fair point.  My problem was numbers.  I told the story through the pilots, who were usually officers.  That involved a dozen (or more) characters. If I had included the Sergeants' Mess too, it would have doubled the cast. That would be more than I, or most readers, could handle.

Meanwhile, my other flying stories have been prompting some mail. Bob in Ottery St. Mary flew Canberras and Buccaneers (both types were capable of carrying nuclear weapons) and he writes: "I don't know how you do it, but the atmosphere and the characters on the squadrons I've served on are often reflected in your books."  Steve in Nottingham, having just read 'Hullo Russia, Goodbye England', says: "The flying descriptions  -  absolutely brilliant. I presume you leaned on some former pilots to get that right."  Well, I certainly had my stuff doublechecked for accuracy, but in essence it all came out of what's left of my mind.  Chris in the Borders "liked HRGE immensely. You have a way with character dialogue that, in my opinion, is second to none....Also the story had me from the start; these are characters that I may not necessarily care about, but I revel in their ups and downs, and ultimately they mostly win me over by the end;  including Luis Cabrillo from 'The Eldorado Network' trilogy..."  (It's actually a quartet, with the new book 'Operation Bamboozle', which Chris bought.) Jonathan in Basingstoke is now on his third copy of 'Piece of Cake', having worn out the other two: "Still an old favourite that I revisit every few years....and it has the rare gift of giving something different every time." While Susan of Colchester bought HRGE and 'Hornet's Sting' as a Christmas gift for her husband, "a devotee of your writing"; and when Richard in Kent got his copy of 'Operation Bamboozle', he was "really chuffed to have a shelf full of your produce."   And I'm chuffed too. 

Derek Robinson                   Return to Homepage

Readers Write #9 February 2010

Barrel-rolling a Boeing, our forgetful MPs,  and a nice line in scams.

For the filming of  Piece of Cake, the Spitfires were flown by professionals, and they took it seriously,  which is understandable when (a) the aeroplane was worth half a million pounds (more now), and (b) it was irreplaceable, and (c) your life depended on it. 

Nevertheless, I remember a day when the weather was too gloomy for filming, and one pilot got very bored with hanging around.  When the cloud-level lifted the light was still poor, but he was itching to fly, and so he took off and threw his Spit around for ten minutes. Just for fun. No charge on the producers. But the pilot got a big charge out of it.  

I mention this because I imagine that inside every commercial pilot is the ghost of a fighter pilot who sometimes looks at his Airbus or his Boeing and wonders what it would be be like to perform a sweet barrel roll, or play leapfrog with the clouds.  Just for fun.  Then the fighter pilot gets firmly put back in his box and the pro pilot returns to another day in the cockpit.  Or, as many call it, the office.  

Maybe that explains why quite a few working pilots like to read my stuff.  Rowland in New South Wales spent eight years flying in police helicopters, and he read his paperback Piece of Cake so often that it fell apart. He says: "Many of my vintage aircrew read it in our many and lengthy downtimes. We read parts of it to each other across the crewroom, office and hangar floor...Good memories."  (He's now bought a hardback copy from me.) "A sincere thank you for the many hours of enjoyment Piece of Cake brought to very bored aircrew waiting for the telephone to ring."  Robert in Cologne is another pilot (he's with Lufthansa) who keeps returning to Cake (now on his sixth reading).  "For me, it is maybe the best book about flying fighters I have ever read," he writes, "apart from being a very good book."  And he adds something it's always good to hear from a pro pilot: "You got the flying scenes right -  and I'm very sensitive when it comes to that."  But it's the humour and the characters that keep drawing him back: "I just read the part where Squadron Leader Rex elaborates on fighter tactics in October '39  -  with Reilly (his dog) yawning and wandering away. That is so good."  Dogs often make useful contributions in my books. My wife reckons that Othello, the elderly basset hound in Operation Bamboozle, has the best lines. Nobody hears him, of course, but he knows what he thinks.

Moving on:  Gordon in Suffolk worked for Rolls-Royce engines until recently.  He enjoyed Hullo Russia, Goodbye England, and he's not the first to tell me he's "absolutely appalled that you could not find a publisher. If you can't get this type of book published, who can?"  It's a mystery to me too, but commercial publishers go their own sweet way, which is why I self-publish my stuff.  Gordon, having found my website, says: "It was like discovering a treasure trove of undiscovered goodies."  (He meant the books, not my author's photograph, which a friend said looks like a benevolent Balkans dictator.  That's what friends are for.) Gordon passes on a story he was told by a veteran aerospace journalist who went to a reception given by a defence manufacturer. Many youngish MPs were there. The journo remarked to them that it was marvellous to see the Vulcan, greatest of all V-bombers, flying again. Blank looks. 'V-bombers....Vulcan, Victor, Valiant...Cold War... nuclear deterrent in the 1960s...' More blank looks. Gordon quotes Alan Bennett: "There is nowhere more distant than the recent past."  Too true. It's one reason why I wrote HRGE. People forget. Even things like the motto of the nuclear powers  -  Mutual Assured Destruction  -  can slip their mind.  

Readers continue to intrigue me by their sheer stamina. David in Barnes SW13 reckons he's read "just about every one of your books at least 5 times (beginning with Goshawk Squadron) and I have now recruited my present wife, my ex-wife, my two brothers, my daughter, her husband and soon, I hope, their two boys."  To which, with the Cake DVD, he's just hooked his son-in-law.  Truly amazing. John, somewhere in Oz, is reading Damned Good Show for the fourth time, and  -  because his dad flew in them  -  would like me to write about the dangerous, low-level work of four-engine Halifaxes dropping supplies to partisans in Italy, Jugoslavia, even Poland. Very hairy ops.  And Peter in Ontario got a kick out of reading A Good Clean Fight, since his dad flew Kittyhawks with the Desert Air Force, went on to fly Spits in Johnson's Canadian wing at D-Day, and survived the war.  Peter ("I'm a big fan") bought Hornet's Sting, Op Bam and Hullo Russia. Then Karen in Switzerland, having just read War Story and Hornet's Sting, says: "I loved both and 'missed' reading them when finished." She's always been interested in vintage aeroplanes and in photography (she sent me some fine airborne** shots taken at Old Warden, especially one of the Bristol Fighter), and her partner is a retired pilot.  Add her interest in the history of both World Wars and (she says) "You managed to tick all the boxes that make the perfect book for me. I adored all the characters and found myself completely absorbed by the pilot psyche of the day."  Lastly, Stephen in Nottingham "enjoyed Bamboozle, which managed to combine a page-turning plot with some lovely period detail (as ever), and a nice line in scams." He then raises an unusual point.  In Cake, he says, I supply the background to every main character  -  except Moggy Cattermole. Stephen wants to know more about him.  I'll give it some serious thought. 

Thanks to everyone who wrote.

** If you would like to see Karen's pictures, Click Here

Readers Write #10 March 2010

 Humour can be more dangerous than gunpowder. With gunpowder,  you get a choice of two:  either it explodes or it fails. With humour, the choice may be three.  Ideally, people laugh.  But some people may not see the point.  When that happens, the silence is deafening.  And yet others may find the alleged humour so unfunny that, for them, it backfires.  It offends them.  This is the risk you take, because there is no such thing as a joke that cannot upset somebody, somewhere.  So humour is a gamble.  Ask any stand-up comic.  He'll tell you of nights when he had to fight the audience to make them laugh.  Other nights, they would laugh no matter what he said, even if it was "Corrugated iron".   Humour is a battlefield. 

    Maybe that's why it's such a big ingredient in my books. I write about battlefields (some of them in the sky) and humour keeps cropping up, even in the most desperate situations. It might be gallows humour.  In my first novel, Goshawk Squadron, a very young fighter pilot is so twitchy about going on patrol that he can't face his porridge at breakfast.  Woolley, the CO, comes in. "Are you going to eat that, Dudley?" Woolley asks.  "Or have you already?"   Nobody in the Mess laughs.  But I hoped the reader would at least smile, partly because the joke helps to tell the story and partly because it helps me  make a living. Richard Briers says much the same thing, and he should know.  

   Richard Briers ('The Good Life')  is one of the best comic actors in Britain. He's been called an icon.  (Live long enough and, as Alan Bennett put it, if you can still eat a boiled egg, you're an icon. I'm the third biggest icon in Bristol. The other two are Wallace and Gromit.) Briers says his talent for comedy has kept his family in comfort for more than 50 years.  Here's his advice to young actors:  "If you want to starve, go for Shakespeare.  But if you can be funny, lucky bugger, look at the bank balance..." Briers is no ham:  he's played King Lear on tour to 30 countries.  But being funny is what he's good at, and he's grateful for the talent.  I'm grateful for mine. Subtract the humour from my books and I don't think Darren (in Western Australia) would have read and re-read all my RFC and RAF stories. 

    "My fave is A Good Clean Fight," he writes. "Such vivid imagery!" He's a Flight Lieutenant, RAAF,  an Air Traffic Controller and amateur pilot, and his Aussie grandfather fought tank battles in the Desert War (where AGCF takes place),  so it's no surprise that the book rang bells for him.  But what strikes him especially is the humour.  "Your wicked satire style is contagious, and I must control myself when dealing with difficult people for weeks after reading one of your books, lest I drop slightly too barbed comments in response to their 'unhelpfulness'." 

    Cut to Luxembourg.  Captain Jean-Marie, a retired pilot, tells me he reads and enjoys all my stuff.  Nowadays, the aircrew in all airlines must have a grasp of English,  which is good for me.  Martin in London SW6 (not a pilot) rates himself as "simply one of your greatest fans" and to prove it he's read Hornet's Sting five times, Goshawk Squadron even more, and he's just finished Damned Good Show for the third time.  Now he's delving into Red Rag Blues and Operation Bamboozle, plus Hullo Russia, Goodbye England. ("Did Silk make it to the church with Zoe?" he asks.)

    Last month I promised Stephen in Nottingham that I would reveal Moggy Cattermole's background, since nothing is said about it in Piece of Cake. I've given it some thought, and young Moggy  -  always too tall for his age, and never a pretty boy  -  turned out to be the only son of a minor Anglican bishop.  He had three elder sisters who spoiled him something rotten.  He soon rebelled against discipline and good manners (this often happened to sons of ultra-respectable families).  He found that he had a talent for getting his own way, sometimes by flattery, sometimes by bribery, sometimes by blackmail.  He was morally neutral but fairly brave. Liked flying  because civilians, especially women, treated him like a god.  Otherwise  -  no ambitions and no principles except having a good time at others' expense. If it hadn't been for the war he would probably have ended up in jail.

Thanks to everyone who wrote.

Readers Write #11 May 2010

Risky Hits,
                    Inedible Cakes,
                                            and the shock of Woolley's Twin Brother 

         When he was being interviewed on television, Stephen Sondheim remarked that, at the opening of  West Side Story on Broadway, many of the audience walked out. The show wasn't what they expected. Their idea of a good musical was lots of easy laughs, gorgeous girls, and songs you could whistle on the way home. West Side Story, by contrast, was about love and hate between street gangs, and it changed for ever the way musicals were written. Sondheim (lyrics) and Leonard Bernstein (music)  -  with some help from Shakespeare  -  wanted to stretch their talents and challenge the audience's expectations.  They wanted to move on, to create something fresh and new and surprising. 

 This is satisfying but dangerous.  Bizet's Carmen was fresh and new and it got panned by the critics. When Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first performed in Paris, the audience rioted.  TIME magazine gave Bonnie and Clyde zero stars. When Dave Brubeck wrote his jazz hit, Take Five, his record company turned it down because, they said, people can't dance to five-in-a-bar music. Van Gogh was broke for most of his short life, Catch-22 was rejected by 17 publishers, and my novel Piece of Cake was such a spectacular flop when first published that the hardback edition got remaindered within six months. Cake is not in the same creative league as Stravinsky or Van Gogh (although some have said it's up there with Heller's Catch-22), but I was trying to make something fresh and original when I wrote it:  a novel about the Battle of Britain which showed that RAF fighter pilots were not all heroic, handsome and always victorious.  They were human. The strain on them was huge. Some behaved admirably. Some did not. Inevitably, the book was condemned by those who preferred to believe the myth. They said that Cake was wrong, bad, disgraceful.  I wasn't surprised, or even disappointed.  If you stick your neck out, chances are that someone will try to chop it off. One good friend urged me to rewrite Goshawk Squadron without Woolley who, he felt, was totally unacceptable. Another friend abandoned  The Eldorado Network after two chapters.  "What on earth is it all about?" he asked.  That's life. Fiction, like fruit, is a matter of personal taste. No book is for everybody, which is why I never say to anyone, "You must read this novel  -  you'll love it."  They may hate it, and despise my terrible taste

This knowledge only goes to boost my respect for those big-hearted readers who strongly recommend my stuff to their children, wives, ex-wives, working colleagues, neighbours, librarians, and someone they met in a bar. Peter, in Wellington, New Zealand, falls into a slightly different category  -  his (adult) daughter takes his books and fails to return them, which explains why he ordered another Cake from me. "This will be the fifth copy I will have (temporarily) owned," he says, and he also owns "three copies each of Goshawk Squadron and  Hornet's Sting, bought at various times against depredations by my daughter."  

Some of the emails I get rank me so highly amongst the Great Writers of the World that I haven't the nerve to repeat them here. But Alan of W5 simply says, "Big fan  -  keep doing it!" while D.E.W.  in Luton says, "I enjoy your books immensely." Another great fan, Jim in Frome, ordered Hornet's Sting and looks forward to "reading the one book I've so far been unable to find."   And Ronald, now living in Normandy and "an avid reader since Kramer's War in 1978", wanted Hullo Russia, Goodbye England and Operation Bamboozle, and tells why  -  "thoroughly entertaining, amusing, informative and thought-provoking." Finally, Nathaniel, here in Bristol, has read everything of mine he could find, then bought Hullo Russia and finished it "at a sitting".   He also uncovered a rarity  -  a figure who was famous enough to get a big obituary which (surprise, surprise) likened him to Major Woolley.

The obit ran in The Guardian on 22 March 1995 and it was written by Christopher MacLehose  (by far the best editor I ever had). It was for Edmund Fisher, a brilliant figure in the publishing world, described as "fabulously intolerant of dead wood" and "militantly unpompous" and "a severe trial to his corporate masters".  MacLehose also detected "an inadvertent likeness in him to Major Woolley, the RFC commander in Goshawk Squadron by Derek Robinson whom Edmund later published (and what a terrifying airman he would have made):  a brave, passionate, rebarbative officer, always seeking out the best in his men, a tireless inspiration to them, always minding about winning, having a huge appetite for combat, insufferable to his superiors, a rattler of cages, a hater of pretentiousness and snobbery, cutter of swathes, not going to be forgotten."  

Certainly not by me. Although he published Goshawk Squadron when he was at Sphere, I never met Edmund. My loss.

Derek Robinson                          Return to Homepage

  Readers Write #12 June 2010