Rugby: A Player's Guide to the Laws

Sports & Outdoors

Derek Robinson

Other Team Sports

HarperCollinsWillow

a good clean fight

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

HARPER/COLLINS

Just testing

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Collins, Harvill

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this is Derek Robinson's masterly novel of the war in the air over the Western Front in 1918. World War One aviators were more than just soldiers - they were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolized the gallant young heroes. But for Stanley Woolley, commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron, the romance of chivalry in the clouds is just a myth. There are two types of men up there: victims and murderers, and the code he drums into his men bans any notion of sport or fair play. This produces better killers but, even so, Wolley believes the whole squadron will be dead within three months. Derek Robinson quietly builds the day-to-day details of these men's lives and deaths into a powerful indictment of war. But this classic of war literature is also very funny - often painfully so.

Goshawk Squadron

Fontana

War Story

HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd

Piece of Cake

Hamish Hamilton

Set during the height of World War I in January 1918, Goshawk Squadron follows the misfortunes of a British flight squadron on the Western Front. For Stanley Woolley, commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron, the romance of chivalry in the clouds is just a myth. The code he drums into his men is simple and savage: shoot the enemy in the back before he knows you're there. Even so, he believes the whole squadron will be dead within three months. A monumental work at the time of its original release, Booker-shortlisted Goshawk Squadron is now viewed as a classic in the mode of Catch 22. Wry, brutal, cynical and hilarious, the men of Robinson's squadron are themselves an embodiment of the maddening contradictions of war: as much a refined troop of British gentleman as they are a viscous band of brothers hell-bent on staying alive and winning the war.

Contemporary

Pan UK

Fresh from school in June 1916, Lieutenant Oliver Paxton's first solo flight is to lead a formation of biplanes across the Channel to join Hornet Squadron in France. Five days later, he crash-lands at his destination, having lost his map, his ballast and every single plane in his charge. To his C.O. he's an idiot, to everyone else - especially the tormenting Australian who shares his billet - a pompous bastard. This is 1916, the year of the Somme, giving Paxton precious little time to grow from innocent to veteran.

Pan Books

Artillery Of Lies

Macmillan Co.

Rotten with Honor

Pocket

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Books by Derek Robinson