Love, Death, Chariot of Fire

"Reg Mitchell is a modest, decent man with a gift for designing fast aeroplanes. Two horrors seek him out terminal illness, and Nazi Germanys predicted invasion of his country. His response will change the course of world history. Here is a splendid love story of maker for machine: an inventors single-minded devotion to his imperilled country, and to the fighter plane that he hopes will save it. Winton Higgins handles the origin story of the Spitfire with the surefootedness of the historian, and eloquence of the poet. His drama of creation is made all the more poignant by its backdrop of destruction: the collective destruction of war, and the personal destruction of the cancer that Mitchell attempts to outpace just long enough to get the job done." -- Sara Knox, author of The Orphan Gunner. The Spitfire was the decisive factor in Nazi Germanys defeat in the 1940 Battle of Britain. Without it Britain would have been occupied as part of the Blitzkrieg through western Europe, and the Nazis would have seized victory in the second world war. For this reason it has remained a cultural artefact, especially in the UK, with new books and documentaries constantly appearing right up to this year. (At the moment the Imperial War Museum in London is busy selling Spitfire merchandise.) In all this Mitchell barely rates a footnote, dutifully mentioned and then passed off as a gifted but otherwise uninteresting nerd who tragically died aged only 42, three years before his creation changed the course of history. This dismissal could hardly be more misleading. Mitchell lived his passions for flight and speed, for his family, and for his fellow creatives in the small aviation company where he worked. His emotional bond with the test pilots who flew his machines left him terrified of making fatal mistakes as he produced a series of record-breaking aircraft for the internationally significant Schneider Trophy in the twenties and early thirties. He was a Little Englander leery of Great British pretensions; one with a rising horror at his governments dithering in the face of the growing fascist menace in Europe. In the end he turned out to be one of the most effective enemies that Nazi Germany attracted. Hitler came to power just when Mitchell himself was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer, and he found himself in a race against time to forge a weapon to meet Nazi Germanys massive rearmament effort before he died. The novel indicates the key moments in the lead-up to the outbreak of war and in the coming together of the individuals and elements that would later (against the odds) secure victory in the Battle of Britain.