by Pat Cunningham

 

All 202×143mm, softback. £8.99 each.
Pecsaeton Publishing, 13 Clare House, 7 Lime Avenue, Derby, DE1 1TU

 

Pat Cunningham has written four books in this series, A Magnificent Diversion, which track the service career and life of Paul Cowley as he serves through WWI. We start off with Paul recovering from injury – and working his way back to fitness and eventually to France, flying the DH2. This comprises the first book, which to my mind is probably the best of the four. In parts it reminds me strongly of the classic Winged Victory. We get some wonderfully descriptive passages when Paul is flying his DH2 on various sorties, and the background of ‘life on the ground’ and in-squadron politics is very believable! In later books, Pat tells us of Paul’s time flying Pups in action – which again is very accurate and very evocative of the time. As the series progresses it is difficult to fault the technical accuracy of Pat’s writing – Paul’s experience of flying DH9 and Handley Page aircraft is particularly vivid! As often happens with series of books, as time goes by the adventures become more unlikely and the coincidences less believable – but despite this slight escalation of disbelief as the series progresses, the technical accuracy and evocative descriptive writing means that I definitely recommend these books to any reader interested in our era.