The first paperback book I ever bought was the Pan Books edition of The Dam Busters, followed by Enemy Coast Ahead and the autobiography of Leonard Cheshire. Since those days the reputation of bomber command, and of its Commander‐in‐Chief Sir Arthur Harris, has fluctuated (to put it kindly) in accordance with changing perceptions of recent history and changing attitudes to the policies behind the bombing operations. But whatever its motives or background circumstances, the bombing campaign of World War II is rarely out of the news or out of discussion, as controversies about strategic bombing rage this way and that and as world politics evolve and try to take account of the lessons of history. That gives a background to and indicates the usefulness of this excellent book. It is a good old‐fashioned survey of all the materials relating to a subject (the kind of thing we used to do as projects at library school for the subject bibliography course), and here it is done most comprehensively.
The book covers almost everything: published sources (books and journal articles), media (film, television and radio), archives (sound and documentary) and Commonwealth War Graves Commission registers (lest we forget: the book is dedicated to Bomber Command’s 74,000 aircrew casualties). These major sections are sub‐divided where necessary, and in the printed books section the sub‐division is very necessary: this section ranges from official published histories through unofficial histories, squadron and airfield histories, aircraft and biographies and memoirs to literature. Each book entry lists the author, title and sub‐title, publisher and date (including details of both first and later editions as appropriate). If these data are brief, they are perfectly satisfactory as a finding aid since this is a guide and not a subject bibliography. That approach is emphasized by the annotations to every entry: these are descriptive, sometimes more analytical or critical, and invariably useful. The section on printed books dominates this work (comprising pages 1‐77), with a mass of material to be covered and dealt with in thorough detail. This detail takes us right down to fiction, poetry (including a brief account of the work of the Oasis Trust to collect and publish manuscript prose and poetry from World War II) and drama (a single entry: Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path, discussed in a full‐page entry). Feature films are covered individually in some detail: this is a particularly useful feature as these films have set many people’s perceptions of Bomber Command and its operations. The arrangement of this section is chronological from The Lion Has Wings of 1939, to Mosquito Squadron of 1969; that more than 20‐year gap since the last feature film was issued on this subject perhaps tells its own story of the fluctuating perceptions (dare we say fashions?) of film makers towards Bomber Command. Incidentally, this section carries another personal connection as my father worked at the film studios when The Dam Busters film was being made; I have little idea of what happened to the still photographs he brought home for me, so it is nice to see one or two of them reproduced here. Television programmes come more up‐to‐date with a Channel 4 documentary of 1996. Newsreels and archived radio broadcasts are also listed and annotated.
The book is particularly well illustrated throughout with a wide range of relevant photographs. In that regard, probably the only serious omission from this work is any list of sources of photographs, other than the major archives listed in the documentary section.
The whole book is so well arranged that it is easy to follow and find relevant information. But just to make sure, we are given comprehensive indexes of: titles; of authors and other people; of film, television and radio personalities; of squadrons; of aircraft types; of airfields; of places; and of institutions and organizations. This seems something of an indexing overkill for a well‐arranged and fairly short reference book, particularly since one or two of these indexes cover barely half a page; perhaps some of the indexes could have been merged, but let me not complain at over‐indexing since that is better than not enough.
Overall this is a very impressive piece of work from an author who came to his subject as an undergraduate in 1983 and who has stuck at it since. It is the result of very thorough investigation and research, as well as of judicious selection and annotation. It comes complete with an introduction by Len Deighton, author of the famous documentary novel about Bomber Command, Bomber, who sings its praises highly. Of its kind this is, indeed, an admirable work which belongs in any specialist or general collection covering either the specific subject itself, or more widely, World War II, military history or modern history.
