CHISHOLM, Roderick. Cover of Darkness.
London: Chatto & Windus, 1953.
First edition, first impression, signed by the author, from the collection of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Portal.
Octavo. Original blue cloth, gilt titles to spine, photographic frontispiece and plates, original pictorial dust jacket priced 12s. 6d. net. Foreword by Air Chief Marshal Sir William Elliot. Signed by Roderick Chisholm on the title page.
A superb first edition of one of the classic first-hand accounts of RAF night-fighting, preserved in unusually fresh condition and with distinguished Portal provenance. Chisholm was no ordinary memoirist. A decorated night-fighter pilot, C.B.E., D.S.O., D.F.C., he flew with No. 604 Squadron, helped develop the techniques of radar-assisted interception, later commanded the Fighter Interception Unit, and served in the shadowy world of Bomber Command support and radio counter-measures. His book follows the development of British night-fighting from the desperate improvisation of 1940, when fighter pilots searched for enemy bombers in what the jacket calls a virtual “blind man’s buff,” through to the increasingly sophisticated use of airborne interception radar, countermeasures, deception and offensive night-fighter operations.
The Portal provenance gives the copy a particularly fine military association. Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford, was Chief of the Air Staff during the central years of the Second World War. Chisholm’s work sat directly within Portal’s strategic world: the defence of Britain from night bombing, the technical race in radar and interception, and the later effort to protect Bomber Command crews by disrupting the German night-fighter system. The book is dedicated “to the crews of Bomber Command,” and its account of night-fighter development, fighter interception and electronic warfare would have had obvious significance in Portal’s own library.
The foreword by Air Chief Marshal Sir William Elliot adds another high-level RAF connection, describing the book as “essentially a book about the air by an airman.” The jacket design, adapted from Frank Wootton’s Mosquitoes Sing at Night, and the striking photographic plates of Mosquito aircraft and night operations give the volume strong visual appeal.
Condition: near fine in a very good to near fine dust jacket. The blue cloth is exceptionally bright and clean, gilt fresh, contents clean and crisp. The dust jacket presents beautifully, with deep colour, only light rubbing, minor creasing and small nicks to the spine head and extremities. A notably sharp copy of a book often found tired, here signed by the author and with exceptional Portal provenance.
