I am very excited to have received in today’s post, a first-edition copy of Charles Rumney Samson’s autobiography, Fights and Flights, published in 1930, just a year before his sudden death. Samson was one of the first four Royal Navy pilots and a pioneer of naval aviation. He will feature frequently as a character in my current novel about the Royal Naval Air Service, much as Roger Keyes dipped in and out of my first novel (and will come back in a later novel). Samson was

One hundred years ago today, the First Battle of Cambrai commenced, the first British Army combined arms attack of WW1 and one in which huge numbers of tanks were deployed to crush the Germans’ barbed-wire defences. Quite naturally, the Royal Tank Regiment claims credit for this battle, but few people recognise that the Royal Navy can claim credit for coming up with the concept for the tank and armoured car. In the first month after the start of WW1, the Royal Naval Air Serv