One Spring in Picardy.

Stanley, William.

Published by London: Angus & Robertson, ()., 1973

About this Item

Octavo, blue boards (hardcover), silver letters, b&w photo. illus. endpapers, 253 pp. Former-owner bookplate; otherwise, Fine (As New) in a Very Good+ dust jacket with sunned spine. From dust jacket: By the time Christopher Robson has to fly F.E. 2b bombers on night raids against the Germans in March 1918, they have become an anachronism, slow and cumbersome relics of the first year of the War when, built as fighters, cavalry officers flew them to see what lay over the hill. By the last year of the War they have been relegated to the role of night bombers and are, in fact, nothing more than a death-trap constructed of struts and wires, wooden booms and inflammable canvas. Old Pushers, they're called, flying bath tubs. But Robson has other enemies than the Germans and his erratic aeroplane. The enemy within him is the most voracious: fear. Then there is his Commanding Officer, Callaghan. Robson gets to hate Callaghan more than he hates any German. Only Madelaine -- who drives a French Army ambulance -- shows Robson, as he sees his friends being killed one by one, that there can be more to life than death and exhaustion, terror and hatred. One Spring in Picardy is a novel without heroes and without heroics. It is a story dominated by machines -- the capricious, almost humanly malevolent biplanes the pilots are forced to fly. Beautifully evoked, scrupulously researched to the last technical and historical detail, this is a book that re-creates for the reader another fragment of that hell we know as the First World War. Literature, Historical Fiction, Novel, Aviation, World War I, WWI, First World War, Historic Fiction. yslic.

Seller Inventory # 3839bd

Bibliographic Details

• Title: One Spring in Picardy.
• Publisher: London: Angus & Robertson, ().
• Publication Date: 1973
• Binding: Hardcover
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included