Mick Mannock, Fighter Pilot (Palgrave Macmillan)

Now published for the first time in paperback, Mick Mannock, Fighter Pilot tells the exciting story of the staunch socialist who became Britain and Ireland's most successful fighter pilot of the First World War. It traces the myth of the Western Front's 'ace with one eye', examining how Mannock VC has been represented in biography and also in fiction. Why is he still commemorated in Canterbury, where he grew up in poverty, and in Wellingborough, where he first became involved with the Labour movement? Mannock's collaborative approach to aerial combat is traced back to his socialist beliefs, and his engineering background seen as a key factor in surviving seventeen months of deadly fighting high above the trenches. Had he lived, would Mannock have fitted into the interwar Labour Party, or been attracted to more extremist socialists? This question prompts a wider discussion of the party's feelings towards socialists such as Clement Attlee and Hugh Dalton who 'had a good war.'