Eighty four days: A Rhyming Appreciation and Comment on the Battle of Britain

Selma Press, Horsted Keynes, Sussex, 1974. First Edition. Hardcover (Original Cloth). Good Condition/Fair. illustrated end-papers; foreword by Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park; contents list; a mixture of verse and prose about the Battle of Britain; this collection is largely based on the personal experiences of a boy who was fifteen years of age during the Battle. He saw much of the daylight fighting from either the saddle of a grocer's delivery tricycle in the streets of North London or garden shelters at the rear of countless homes in the Enfield district. The Messerschmitt 110 that crashed into the sewage farm at Ponders End is no myth. Along with the Junkers 86 mentioned in ‘ONE OF THE FEW’, the Dornier that crashed at Southbury Road and the Stuka that blew up at Epping, mentioned in ‘ONE OF THE MANY’, these incidents were eagerly visited by the writer on his beloved bike in accordance with the current teenage pastime of 1940. Only actual characters have been changed on occasions as the writer felt prudent in these attempts to portray most aspects of the momentous Battle he witnessed. He had no true grasp of its importance at the time , The same could be truthfully said of most of the adults around him. By September 1940, Douglas Bader, Stanford Tuck, Sailor Malan and countless other pilots, had become household words to the populace at large. To those of us who were either schoolboys, or just out of school, they were idols to which no modern pop star could even begin to compare. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. xxiii + 175. some white marks to covers. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. wear to edges (especially top edge) & some very small holes to spine; now in archive acetate film protection. Gilt titles spine. blue cloth; illustrated by b/w. drawings. Includes appendices: (a facsimile of the 32-page Ministry of Information Booklet on the Battle of Britain & facsimiles of Anti-Invasion leaflets issued nationwide.). Quantity Available: 1. Category: Military & Warfare; Air Warfare; Battle of Britain; Aviation; Britain/UK; 1940s; Poetry. Inventory No: 4235. .