Double Signing Today

 

Yes. It's today we have our
double book signing.

A Horse in the Bathroom - Derek J Taylor

and

Lost in the Flames - Christopher Jory

excellent reads with good feedback already

(see our Reviews)

From 10.30 am till when hunger strikes.

Lost in the Flames Q 4

Tony

Were you always planning to write? And was it always going to be this book?

Christopher

This is actually my second manuscript – the first is called The Art of Waiting (appropriately named, as it’s still waiting). After I’d read a lot about Bomber Command, and the last airworthy Lancaster in England had flown over my house on several occasions and I’d got to know the sound of its engines, and I’d heard more anecdotes about Jackie from my grandmother – and had read A.C. Grayling’s Among the Dead Cities, in which he compares the Bomber Command airmen to the 9/11 bombers – I knew I wanted to write a book about Bomber Command. I’m not a historian, so it had to be a novel – though the first draft of the book was trying unsuccessfully (and unintentionally) to be both a novel and a history book. And I had this naïve notion that a novel might be read by people with no interest in Bomber Command, and that if they read it, they might understand why the public perception of the Bomber Command airmen has been lazy and unfair, and that I might somehow help to set the record straight. I spent the Christmas holidays in 2009 in front of the fire, drinking Hook Norton beer and listening to Magic FM, and from that I got the basic shape and sentiment of what I wanted to try to put into words. Then it was a case of trying to get that sentiment out, and I did it in a rush, long nights and weekends (and more beer and love songs) until it was done. In part it’s a tribute to Jackie and the other 55,572 who died while flying with Bomber Command, and in part it’s an attempt to try to understand for myself what he went through, to understand it by trying to re-imagine it. 

Lost in the Flames - Question 2

Tony

The book is clearly in support of the bomber boys themselves but is ambivalent about the effect on German morale or capability. Have you an opinion on this?

Christopher

Historians of the calibre of Max Hastings, Richard Overy, and Robin Neillands do not agree on whether the bombing strategy was effective or whether the bombing was excessive or morally justified (particularly in the last few months of the war), so I don’t think I’m qualified to give a firm view either way. I could trawl through some of the arguments on each side of the fence, but would just be repeating what has been said by those more knowledgeable than I am. However, if you’re interested, I’ve included links to a couple of interesting pieces on my website (www.manorhousepress.com) – an article by David Bashow in defence of Bomber Command, and a debate between the philosopher A.C. Grayling and Christopher Hitchens (the former playing the prosecution, the other the defence). What is clear is that there were victims on the ground and victims in the air, and what happened can only have been dreadful for all of them. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the bombing strategy, to suggest that the airmen themselves were somehow culpable, rather than victims of the times and circumstances through which they lived, seems very wrong, and to judge them in hindsight and through the lens of modern-day peacetime morality seems a flawed means of evaluating what they did for this country when it was on its knees and engaged in a genuine fight for survival.

Lost in the Flames - blog interview

I've dropped a line recently, to Christopher Jory, author of Lost in the Flames. Over the next few days, I'll blog with some of the answers he gave to my questions. This first reply is particularly interesting as it makes clear that much of the book is based closely on F.O. John Ross, to whom the book is dedicated.

Tony

You dedicate the book to a named airman and 55,572 others. Who was Flying Officer John Ross?

Christopher

Flying Officer John Ross was my grandmother’s brother – something of a legend in the family, known to everyone now as Uncle Jackie. He served in 186 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command. Like Jacob in Lost in the Flames, Jackie trained initially as a pilot but ended up as a bomb-aimer. Jackie and Jacob share other characteristics – they both grew up in country towns, went to Grammar School, as boys wrote of their dreams of flying and in adulthood wrote poems, volunteered as soon as they could, trained in Canada, flew more than one tour of ops, felt some sort of guilt at what they were required to do (breaking down and saying, when very drunk and in floods of tears, ‘These hands have killed thousands’). They both knew they had little chance of surviving for long – six weeks was an average expectation in Bomber Command – but carried on regardless because they had a sense of duty and no real choice. They both left a cigarette stub on the mantelpiece before their last op (I saw Jackie’s for the first time just the other day, when I gave my grandmother a copy of the book), and they both flew the plane home on many occasions because their pilots’ nerves were shot away by the conditions in which they operated. Jackie was killed on his 36th operation, over Dortmund, on 3rd February 1945, aged 21. He could have stopped after thirty ops, but he said they would think he was ‘chicken’ if he did, so he carried on – and perhaps he loved flying too much to stop. I’ve learned these things about Jackie from my grandmother, and elements of many of her anecdotes about him occur in the book, so there is an authenticity to the actions and sentiments described. I also have copies of some of Jackie’s letters, and I have used elements of these too – Jacob’s letter on p.194, for example, is taken virtually word-for-word from a letter Jackie wrote, and I’m pleased that his words can be read – and his photo seen – by those who never met him, nearly 70 years after he died. I think he deserves this recognition, and more.