One Boy’s War

The author found the reality of the Second World War at first very different from the world of heroic Captain Ball V.C. It was all dirty blankets and Nissen hut obscenities. Then the golden doors miraculously opened and he suddenly found himself in peacetime California, at 19 learning to fly between long weekends in Hollywood where he hobnobbed with his idols like Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland and Kay Francis. Back in Europe, the picture changed once more. The author flew and flew, mastering the Hurricane and the Spitfire, and then the ranting Typhoon. At last he found himself on nodding terms with the ghost of Captain Ball as well as on kissing-cousin terms with the glamorous stars of movie-land. An amusing and exciting wartime biography. Over a long and successful career as a naval historian, Richard Hough wrote numerous books including THE LONGEST BATTLE, THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN and best-selling biographies of both Earl Mountbatten of Burma and his wife, Edwina.