We asked lots of groups all over the country to give us their thoughts on First Light by Geoffrey Wellum.

A readers group from Bradford.

Present: Louise, Alex, Sheila, Nicola, Joyce, Angela.

We were surprised at how much we liked this book, it was not one that any of us would have picked up in a bookshop and yet we were saying things like   "I just couldn't wait to get home and pick it up" None of us would have contemplated reading this book and yet we have all enjoyed it very much - we should give it to our children to read so that they know something of this history. 

The author conveys a sense that being a fighter pilot is glamorous, exciting and dangerous but without playing on the glamour He really does manage to convey a sense of what it must have been like, it becomes real.

The author talks about how privileged he feels compared to infantry.  Although you are aware of the class thing - it is a background which you have to leave on one side.  We didn't think the author was aware of it.   The language is old fashioned and set in the matrix of class; the author maintains values appropriate to his class - he assumes you understand and accept these values also. He, of course, was part of the ruling class and his upbringing as part and parcel of this.

When he was flying you were on the edge of you seats and you couldn't possibly be bored.  It was a fantastic first hand account.   The publishers have found someone with a talent for writing and who has had these exciting and unique experiences. The whole book is punchy exciting and very immediate.   We really should be admiring what he could do at 17 3/4 years old. 

Reading this book made us want to see the Battle of Britain again.   The country was besieged - if we did not know about the war, the book did not really give us the wider picture, for example when did the Battle of Britain begin and end, what else was going on.

The author of course has doubts about the war but  he does not really  have the vocabulary to express these  doubts.  Perhaps  reading  Kipling would be appropriate.  The few did save the country.  The Battle of Britain became a symbol.  However bring in the Infantry must have been  harder.  He evoked the fight in the dark so well you really felt that you are in there with him.  You are in that world.  It is the magic of individual lives.  It is more than a story of the war torn skies, but individual experience. It is the magic of flying.  It makes you want to go on a flying course.  

He was flying state of the art equipment and it was amazing to think that it still let rainwater in and that at times it was freezing cold!  We would have like to see more photographs.  This was high tech stuff compared to your average RAF pilot.  It also is documenting the beginning of the anonymity of war.  The bombers dropping their bombs from great heights. This is all part of our history - most of our parents were in the war.  There was so much of this kind of story about when we were growing up - but not so much nowadays - why our children should read this book.

  The book ended abruptly - we wanted to know how he adjusted to the end of the war - did he marry the delicate grace.   When all your adult life has been in the war what do you do when the war ends and what then do you do with your life.  The ending was a damp squib.

Overall we would certainly recommend this book as a "compelling read" the group was unanimous in our enjoyment of this book.  It was a window onto another world and another class.

Review by Stephen J Hackett from Wiltshire

One might have thought, more than 60 years on, that there was nothing new to be said about the events of summer 1940. How wrong. Geoffrey Wellum's First Light recreates in fantastic detail the Battle of Britain, when he - as a new pilot - is daily engaged in the fight against the Luftwaffe. From the moment he decides - walking through central London - that he doesn't want to spend his life in an office, and joins the RAF, to the heartbreaking moment when he is summarily 'posted' from his unit, exhausted and 'over the hill' at 19, Wellum's tale his gripping. The long periods of training - themselves dangerous, as several fellow trainees are killed - and the even longer, nerve-jangling periods waiting for the call to 'scramble', are vividly conveyed, and without ever being boring to read about. But it is the staccato bursts of activity that really took hold of this reader - as Wellum throws his Spitfire around the skies over Southern England, the pursued and the pursuer, in one dogfight after another. The long fog-bound flight back from a pursuit over the North Sea must stand as one of the classic episodes in aviation literature.

Even he admits that operations begin to blur into one another, marked only by the deaths of close friends and occasional weekends of escape to his parents' home, or snatched moments with his girlfriend Grace.

Wellum's decision to tell his story after 60 years is profoundly welcome - that his story is typical of so many others of his generation, is humbling in the extreme -

Wellum confesses to the belief that he had lived the best of his life by the time he reached 21 - as a 40 year old I can only say "we that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long" (King Lear). 

Individual reviews from Braunton Library Reading Group

Reviewer 1:  enjoyed the first quarter of the book, but found the remainder far too technical-more suited for a male reader in my age group (70ish). The place names did bring back many memories of that time. It was wonderful that he managed to come through the war, and has so many sad and happy memories.

Reviewer 2: I have read a book that I would have not normally chosen. That would have been a pity as I enjoyed this book very much. It really etched on the memory- the names and places of anybody who lived through the war, it all came so vividly to light. It gave an impression of great loneliness even when living closely with others who were sharing the dangers and hope of survival. This was a story to remind us of the not-so-distant past and the dedication, but above all the youth of those involved.

Reviewer 3: I would not have normally read this type of book, but thoroughly enjoyed it!!.  A fascinating story and well written. Absolutely marvellous. 

Review by Clare Mollison from Leith

This is an engaging first hand account of Geoffrey Wellum's experience in the RAF during the Second World War, particularly during the Battle of Britain in 1940/41.  Wellum's informal and detailed account of his experience is accessible and entertaining.  I found this an enlightening and surprising account of  an angle of WW2 which was new to me.  Wellum's style and tone are pleasant and at times gripping, and he succeeds in bringing the activities of more than 60 years ago close to the present.  It contains moving memories of airmen who were killed in action, and vividly catalogues his growing up from raw schoolboy to mature soldier and pilot.  

While not making light of war, it is not a bleak book and will be of interest to those who would not normally read about the war or air craft.  It comes across as an honest account of what Wellum felt at the time, naive in places but naturally so and accurately portraying the risks, pressure, exhilaration that young airmen felt.

I would recommend this book to other readers - perhaps giving it 7/10. 

 Review by  BLG of Billericay Readers' Group

When this book was first handed to me I thought it would be a man's read.  Now, halfway through, I cannot put it down.  I was 16 when the war broke out and lived within a very short distance as the crow flies of Hornchurch Aerodrome. I can still hear the engines revving, see the spits soar into the sky, hear the bombers' heavy drone. 

We were married in 1942.  Reading this book has formed a backcloth of memories to our Diamond Wedding celebrations.  I do hope this book will be widely read.  The words paint a brilliant very vivid picture.  A chapter on page 154 clearly expresses the fear and mainly anger at what was happening. I remember so clearly. A very very good book.    

Review by Sylvia Kent, Billericay Readers Group

For someone who was born during World War II and brought up during the 50s when people distanced themselves from the anguish and fear of that earlier decade, I grew up knowing very little about the war, the Battle of Britain and just exactly who were "The Few" about whom people spoke so reverently.

Geoffrey Wellum's first hand account of  his early RAF training and the later battles in the sky in those tiny fighter planes, have given me an understanding of just what those young pilots went through.  What a debt we owe them!  Wellum's accounts of that desperate time are both poignant yet funny.  I love his style and feel that, to be able to remember so much after sixty years, is a tremendous achievement.

Written in first person, the author takes you up there with him in that tiny small Spitfire, high in the sky,  fighting against such enormous odds, I found his descriptive prose so beautifully written - it would be a great asset if today's youngsters  were encouraged to read it, just to get an idea of what those before us went through and died in the process.

Although the majority of the books we read in our group are fiction, this is one that I would definitely recommend this one as an excellent read.