Winkle: The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Greatest Pilot

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An incredible life ... Brown took a secret to the grave that makes his story all the more remarkable The Sun He carried, to his dying day, pieces of plexiglass lodged in his cheek and mouth that they couldn’t operate on and remove,” says Beaver. “To land on an aircraft carrier that is moving 60ft up and down, whilst wounded and with one eye inoperable because it is coated in blood, is quite remarkable.” The book does a pretty fair job of portraying Brown's personality. Highly competent, more than a little arrogant professionally, more at home abroad than at home. Not all that unusual for test pilots from the Golden Age of Flight Test (~1943-58).

Brown’s military experience comes mostly from known material, with enough added detail to provide spice, and not inconsiderable horror, to his early combat flying, and his being aboard Audacious when she was torpedoed. His survival—like many instances in his flying career—was near miraculous. Besides meticulous preparation, he embodied what has been described as essential for successful aviators: almost pathological self-confidence. By a twist of fate, it turned out to be the Glenn Miller’s final public performance. The following day, Miller flew to Paris. His aircraft disappeared over the English Channel in atrocious weather, with all on board lost.Eric 'Winkle' Brown may not be a household name, but he certainly should be, and this thumping great biography by Britain's leading aviation historian deserves to put that right DAILY MAIL 'BOOK OF THE WEEK' Brown seemed a shoo-in to join the Royal Air Force during the Second World War but there was a hitch – when the 19-year-old aspiring pilot reported to the recruiting office in Edinburgh, he was told sign-ups were at capacity and there was a three-month wait. Another detail that Beaver disproved during his research was Brown’s claim that his father Robert served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. “I did get his father’s military record and he was in the Royal Flying Corps, but not as a pilot – he was a labourer working on the observation balloons.” The first indication, he says, that some details “didn’t add up” came following Brown’s death in 2016, aged 97. “After he died his family gave me all the papers,” recalls Beaver. “I was the first non-family member they called when he was taken ill in 2016 because we were close.

Small in stature but immense in reputation and talent, there was more to Eric 'Winkle' Brown than met the eye. With a life as remarkable as his flying, Brown faced imprisonment in Germany at the outbreak of WWII, and after the Allied victory his fluent German saw him interviewing senior Nazi officials and participating in the liberation of Belsen - an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life. As Paul said to us, he wanted this book to be about the man, rather than the aircraft, and it’s an extraordinary tale of a talented but complicated man who served his country in many ways. It was always agreed I would have access to his papers and there were 12 big boxes. That took a long time to go through. Having read Wings On My Sleeve, Brown’s autobiography, I was intrigued by the man who wrote it. He focused so much on the aircraft he flew that the were huge question marks in my mind about what formed the man himself. This book (fortunately published not long after I’d read the former) largely answers all my questions and others I hadn’t thought to ask.

2. He rode in a ‘wall of death’ stunt – with a real lion

Before becoming one of Britain’s elite test pilots, Eric had a very full WWII combat career which included being shot up and making a forced landing with multiple injuries and also survived the sinking of his ship, HMS Audacity. As befits a man who is both a Conservative MP and biographer of the political philosophers Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, Norman understands the interplay of power and influence innately. His debut novel channels the style and approach of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, depicting the bitter struggle for preferment and position between the scholar Francis Bacon and the lawyer Edward Coke in the Elizabethan court. Similarities to the murkiness of contemporary politics are surely coincidental. Act of Oblivion Some might say ‘The World’s Greatest Pilot’ but Paul Beaver, author of a new biography of Eric Brown called simply ‘Winkle’, said his publisher, Penguin Michael Joseph, vetoed that for the book’s cover because it might upset the Americans. Maybe, maybe not.