BOMBER HARRIS: HIS LIFE AND TIMES.(Review)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 22-SEP-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

BOMBER HARRIS: HIS LIFE AND TIMES by Henry Probert Greenhill, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 432, ISBN 1853674737

In Turville churchyard next to where I live stands a headstone to a Sergeant-Pilot P. H. Hazell. Last month, the 60th anniversary of his death in action, aged 19, I placed some flowers on his grave, and reflected, for the umpteenth time, about the 55,000 of Bomber Command who died in the second world war. They were our `lost generation', surprisingly just about equal in numbers to the officer corps wiped out in 1914-18. They were the elite who should have led this country in the shambly Fifties and Sixties, the future technocrats who could have saved British aviation -- and perhaps even Marconi.

My reflections were not entirely impersonal; like...

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