{"id":102,"date":"2015-04-15T18:08:07","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T18:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/srfb\/?p=102"},"modified":"2015-04-15T18:08:07","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T18:08:07","slug":"perhaps-the-end-of-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/2015\/04\/15\/perhaps-the-end-of-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Perhaps the end of the beginning…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m hopeless at remembering Churchill quotes, so don’t ask me the full comment on victory at Alamein.\u00a0 I can just about remember the post-Barbarossa remark about if Hitler invaded hell – ‘I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons’?\u00a0 One of my favourites is November 1944 and Eden complains to the PM how hard it is to get Turkey into the war: ‘Tell them Christmas is coming.’\u00a0 You have to say it in that<\/em> voice.\u00a0 My students will all confirm that I’ll take any opportunity to mimic Churchill (no doubt poorly).\u00a0 I’m also not averse to slipping a Clem impersonation into lectures, but if I’m honest my Attlee voice sounds not that dissimilar from my Monty voice (the same clipped, officer class – although\u00a0the major\u00a0had a\u00a0deep suspicion of generals, with good cause).\u00a0 Socialist majors are very much in my mind as my 2001 book Mick Mannock, Fighter Pilot: Myth, Life and Politics<\/em> has just been published in paperback with a fresh preface, to mark the centenary of Edward Mannock’s release from pretty hellish internment in Turkey.\u00a0 The previous History commissioning editor at Palgrave Macmillan read the hardback eighteen months ago, and was convinced that if published by Pan at a modest price (almost no production costs of course) then\u00a0there was a healthy audience waiting to purchase a well researched, previously well received book on flying in the Great War.\u00a0 At some point over the winter, when I was distracted by family concerns, the book slipped back to Palgrave Macmillan, the academic imprint, and in consequence this near cost-free\u00a0paperback is priced at an absurd \u00a319.99.\u00a0 Don’t these people want to sell books?!\u00a0 I’ve written a plug for the book which hopefully will be in next week’s New Statesman<\/em>.\u00a0 In the piece I’ve noted that, had he not been shot down in July 1918, Mannock would probably have been his party’s candidate for Wellingborough in the ‘Coupon Election’.\u00a0 As Labour won the seat my man would have left the RAF to become an MP, presumably sitting with the ILP’s awkward squad (most of whom had opposed the war, much to Mannock’s disgust).\u00a0 There must be something about the water in that\u00a0part of the East Midlands as the current\u00a0MP is a fully paid-up member of the Tory\u00a0awkward squad, the arch Euro-sceptic Peter Bone.\u00a0 While his politics are on the whole a long way from my own I warmed to Bone the more\u00a0I saw of him on Peter Cockerell’s excellent BBC2 series Inside The Commons<\/em>.\u00a0 Presumably Mr Bone (no Rt Hon there I suspect) will be pounding the streets of his constituency this weekend and not partaking of the first weekend of events at the South Bank under the umbrella title of\u00a0‘Changing Britain’.\u00a0 This festival, in which pleasingly David Kynaston has had a big hand, stretches out over the next three weekend.\u00a0 I was delighted to get a gig at the Royal Festival Hall\u00a0next Saturday afternoon – the only time I can walk in the steps of Richard Thompson et al.\u00a0 My first set is as part of a panel on postwar housing (yes, I am indeed nervous about sharing the stage with distinguished architectural and town planning commentators), and the second set\u00a0is chairing a ‘conversation’ between Kathleen Burk and Vernon Bogdanor on British foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s (that’s more like performing the familiar hits, to strain the metaphor).\u00a0 I have a day or two to remind myself about housing in postwar Britain as I have just finished chapter 5 of the Fairey biography\u00a0(with\u00a0material pushed into chapter 6, on the 1930s).\u00a0 This was a blockbuster (19K words – ouch!), which\u00a0covered the whole of an eventful 1920s.\u00a0 I reckon, with about 80K words under my belt that I am over the hump (an unfortunate phrase, reminding me that\u00a0Dickie and Bill are together at SEAC screaming out for me to renew telling the Mountbatten story), but there is still a very long way to go, i.e. an equally eventful 1930s, Washington during the war (some of that research under my belt thankfully), and then 1945-56 with a world speed record to smash in CRF’s final months.\u00a0\u00a0So, I’m\u00a0titling the book The Man Who Built the Swordfish<\/em>,\u00a0and yet\u00a0I have still some way to go before the old ‘stringbag’ actually takes to the air.\u00a0 No wonder I find myself quoting Churchill in late 1942, ‘buggering on’ indeed!\u00a0 The chapter\u00a0I am most looking forward to researching and writing is the one about sailing and fly fishing (based on direct acquaintance with the Test I hope), and Fairey’s myriad activities away from building aircraft.\u00a0 This includes setting up Fairey Marine after the war; and my thanks to Charles Lawrence for giving me a copy of his beautiful coffee table book on FM, and to Gordon Curry who has lent me a large box full of photographs and other material concerning his dad, who\u00a0oversaw boat construction at Hamble, and his dad’s boss\u00a0the ex-RFC\/RAF pilot and Fairey director Colin Chichester Smith.\u00a0 I met Gordon, a neighbour of Charles\u00a0Fairey, at Pittleworth on Sunday when Mary and I again enjoyed\u00a0Jane Tennant’s kind hospitality (fittingly for the principal guest, our lunch was curry).\u00a0 Jane of\u00a0course is\u00a0Sir Richard Fairey’s daughter by his second marriage, and as I move\u00a0closer to events within memory of relatives and friends I shall become ever more dependent upon her advice and\u00a0her extremely sharp powers of recall.\u00a0 I doubt if Jane ever met Churchill, but she told me on Sunday\u00a0that she did meet Beaverbrook (Max and Dick became firm friends from June 1940, but frustratingly no personal correspondence seems to have survived).\u00a0 When it comes to name dropping, however, Jane’s husband David Tennant can beat them all – he has a clear recollection of Asquith, and Sir Edward Grey was his godfather.\u00a0 Given that Grey wrote a book about fishing on the Test how fitting that every day his godson can stand on the riverbank, and at least twice a week\u00a0put on his waders, pick up his rod, and with quiet confidence cast his fly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m hopeless at remembering Churchill quotes, so don’t ask me the full comment on victory at Alamein.\u00a0 I can just about remember the post-Barbarossa remark about if Hitler invaded hell – ‘I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons’?\u00a0 One of my favourites is November 1944 and … <\/p>\n

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