I have loved Robert Radcliffe’s previous five novels, to the point I even read one of them as an eBook. Radcliffe’s new tale is his most ambitious yet. Airborne is the first of trilogy of novels telling the tale of a boy caught between countries, in search of a father and who finds two; John Frost, godfather of the Parachute Regiment and Erwin Rommel, The Desert Fox.
Rowland White’s fourth book tells the tale of the development of the first two Space Shuttles, Enterprise and Columbia. Following the crews that would glide Enterprise from the back of a 747 and then blast off atop the loudest rockets ever built, Into The Black is a fascinating tribute to Columbia.
When my Grandparents came over for a mammoth visit after we had moved to England, I had an old Canadian TV and VCR to watch the tapes we’d brought with us. My Granma brought me a bunch of old movies, which is what she always did when we spent time together. She introduced me to some of the greatest films I have ever seen and, also, that good movies do not also need to be made in colour. On this trip, knowing me as she did, she brought me a copy of an RKO Picture called Spitfire.
One of the defining moments of my young life happened on a raining autumn day in 1988 on a family holiday to London. We visited Barnardo’s, where my father had spent a brief period with his sister after they had been taken from their mother. We sat in a dull office and a rather officious woman explained to my father that his father was a German POW named Herman. A brief moment of shock and pain for my Dad, who was finally learning a truth about his life he had never known.