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."

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." 

My other fiction hits other targets: it includes a trilogy about Luis Cabrillo, a masterly double-agent and con-artist in WW2 and after, ("He's a heel, bless him." The Observer said), and 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. 

New novel seeks publisher

My latest aviation story is in typescript. It’s looking for a publisher who knows my other RAF fiction and feels up to taking on a sequel.  It’s called Hullo Russia, Goodbye England, and the title boils down the plot. We’re in England, it’s 1963, and Silk is a pilot on an RAF Vulcan squadron. The task of Vulcan crews  is to nuke Soviet cities, but only in retaliation for a Soviet nuclear attack on England. Such an attack would obliterate RAF bases, so there would be nowhere (and nobody) for the Vulcans to return to.  Hence the title. 

Characters from previous novels reappear: Skull, the Intelligence Officer, always getting sacked for telling the truth;  and Zoe, no longer a dizzy deb, and more than a handful for Silk. Even Baggy Bletchley, last met in A Good Clean Fight, has a cameo role.  To focus attention, there is the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Silk surprised himself (and me) by surviving World War Two with a double DFC. Now Hullo Russia, Goodbye England finds him preoccupied with lust, distrust, and mutual nuclear annihilation, in roughly equal proportions.  As somebody once  said of my writing: “Disrespect falls just short of subversion.” HRGE is ready to go.  Make me an offer.

                                     …And New Paperback?

Between novels of air combat I write stories about Luis Cabrillo, the best double agent of World War Two. (He really existed, but not under that name.) With the war over, he adopts a similar career as a con artist.  Red Rag Blues finds him making big bucks in 1953 in the Washington DC of Senator Joe McCarthy.  The Red witch-hunter is running short of Commie treachery to expose, so Luis manufactures it, and the two men embrace like clams in heat. Then spooks from left and right get involved, and shots ring out.  The Observer gave Red Rag Blues a big and cheerful review     (“dialogue beyond compare…hits the ground wisecracking on the first page and is still at it, without any sign of flagging, at the novel’s close”).  The UK hardback came out in 2006, but the novel has yet to be paperbacked,  I own the rights.  Get in touch if you’re interested.

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.