First edition

232 pages

Each copy numbered and signed

 PRICE IN U.K.  or Europe  -  £15  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.  £20 per copy, inc. airmail p&p.

Readers Write #22 January 2012  

Ice cold in Kandahar,

       a Goshawk with clipped wings,

                and no good deed goes unpunished

The Royal Flying Corps is almost a hundred years old. A reader of my RFC trilogy today is in a comparable position to someone in 1912 who was reading about the Battle of Waterloo. And yet today's reader seems able to put himself in the cockpit of an FE2b or an SE5a with a great understanding of the excitement and horror of flying over the Western Front. That understanding is sharpened when the reader has himself tasted a similar excitement of horror in combat. That's my theory, anyway. Patrick, an old friend and a U.S. infantry veteran of Iraq, is now on his second tour of duty in Aghanistan, where, he says, "Your books were a welcome diversion from the day-to-day work" - which is with an Airborne Division. Recently he bought A Good Clean Fight, a novel set in North Africa in 1942. It follows Hornet Squadron and, separately, an S.A.S. patrol which raids behind enemy lines. The patrol is led by Captain Lampard with a reckless determination that some might call foolhardy. "I served with Lampard in 2005," Patrick writes. "He is an ass, and currently works at a base in the U.S. Some of my current teammates show up in your books as well, but without the Wodehouseian banter of their WW2 British counterparts. I am looking forward to seeing whom I'll meet in the RFC series." He meant Hornet's Sting, which may take his mind off the cold "as I start to read, shivering in my billets near Kandahar."

Somewhat north of Afghanistan, in Bavaria, reading Goshawk Squadron caused Erben to start thinking hard about another war. His father, a WW2 veteran, told him: "In peacetime, all is well rehearsed, and when war begins, chaos rules" - or, in its English version, "The first casualty of war is the plan." (Not, as many think, the truth.) Erben has just read my Invasion,1940, which coincides with his own ideas. Hitler, he says, "decided to fight a strategic war without having strategic weapons. I cannot understand how he or his generals intended to do long-range airstrikes with a Me109" - whose limited range (no drop-tanks) meant it could fly no further than London. "That was not cunning planning," Erben says, and he singles out Operation Sealion (the planned seaborne invasion, largely in towed river barges) as an example of the improvisation that dogged the German war effort. "You wouldn't have needed the Royal Navy to 'boldly wipe out' the invasion," he says. "Perhaps bad weather would have done damage enough."

Perhaps. But if Sealion had sailed in a flat calm, the Royal Navy was ready and waiting.

Europeans are often so fluent in English that they put us Brits to shame, and Boris in Frankenburg, Germany is a good example. He's read (and "enjoyed enormously") almost all my RFC and RAF series and he has no trouble with the pilots' dialogue, which (like pilots themselves) cannnot always be taken seriously. Now he's bought enough books to fill the gaps, and he seeks The Eldorado Network too - which, unfortunately, I can't supply. Maybe my publisher will reissue it. Rob, near Rotterdam, a "great fan" of Piece of Cake, bought my other WW2 books. And Cees, not far away in Amsterdam ("In 1983 I bought The Eldorado Network and I read it at least once a year") discovered that there is a sequel. In fact there are three. I have no spare copies of the first, Artillery of Lies, but I was able to supply Cees with Red Rag Blues and Operation Bamboozle.

Leap ten thousand miles to the south-east (which of course is no barrier to the Internet) and Liz in Melbourne, having searched in vain for my titles in Australia, then found my website and ordered the RAF/WW2 trilogy as a birthday gift for her husband, an "avid reader" of my novels. Still in Australia, George in Goolwa Beach writes that he "particularly enjoyed the RFC series. I have great respect for those airmen. I used the Vickers MMG when a member of my school Cadet Unit (late 1950s). Clearing a stoppage on those guns was hard enough on the ground!" He bought more copies of War Story and Damned Good Show.

Now jump another few thousand miles to Canada and to Peter in Nova Scotia. His father read Goshawk Squadron to him when he was a kid, "strategically omitting some parts, as I later discovered when reading it for myself as a teenager." (I can't imagine what those parts were, unless his dad took exception to the solitary section where Woolley forces a new fighter pilot to utter a string of profanity, in an effort to shatter the schoolboy decency that obstructs his hunger for the kill. In later years I was able to compare that section with translations of the book and learn how to swear in French, Spanish and Dutch.) Peter went on to read more of my stuff, ordered Hullo Russia and Hornet's Sting, enjoyed the first "immensely" and saved the second "for the Christmas holidays" - and then bought extra copies of both for his father, a late thank-you for starting the ball rolling all those years ago.

From Canada to England and Portsmouth, where Didier ("a huge fan") ordered Hornet's Sting and A Good Clean Fight. Robert in Tyne and Wear bought Invasion,1940 and Operation Bamboozle, and emailed me later to say, "I am sorry that I have read them because I have not got them to look forward to. Invasion,1940 should be put forward as to how history should be written. And as funny as your other war books. Is 'funny' the right word? 'Entertaining'? Bamboozle equally as good." Meanwhile, Nick in Norfolk tells of an experience familiar to many of us. "Over the years I've bought all of your WW1 and WW2 books and been so enthralled and impressed that I couldn't wait to lend them to like-minded mates." We all know what's coming, Nick. The books "became public property so I never saw most of them again..." Now he has refreshed his shelves with copies of Hornet's Sting and A Good Clean Fight, and he waits patiently for MacLehose Press to reissue Cake and Hullo Russia (scheduled for March 2012). Elsewhere, David in Rochester, Kent, having enjoyed Operation Bamboozle, adds: "I hope you write many more." At least one more - called A Splendid Little War - will appear from MacLehose Press, probably in autumn 2012. After that, who knows?

One thing is definite. I shan't be doing any business in all of February 2012. The shop will be shut while the computer gets thoroughly overhauled, oiled and polished. So - please save your emails for March.

 My thanks to all who wrote. 

 Derek Robinson                   Previous Readers Write

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