GRAVES, Charles. Seven Pilots. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1943.
A superb presentation copy from Charles Graves to Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, from Portal’s personal collection, inscribed on the front free endpaper. The inscription appears to read: “To Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal from Charles Graves, Jan. 11, 1943.” The association is an excellent one. Graves was a journalist, broadcaster and wartime writer whose RAF “true-life novels” translated recent air-war experience into popular narrative form. Seven Pilots followed The Thin Blue Line and The Avengers, and was written under official auspices as part of the wider wartime effort to bring the work of the RAF before the reading public. Portal, as Chief of the Air Staff, was the senior professional head of the RAF, making him the most fitting recipient for a presentation copy of a book dedicated to the experiences and character of RAF airmen.
First edition. Octavo, original blue cloth, in the striking original pictorial dust jacket priced 8/6 net, with RAF roundel design and bold yellow lettering to the front panel. With 17 illustrations. The jacket is a major feature of this copy: bright, fresh and highly attractive, with only minor rubbing, slight edge wear and a few small nicks, but with the colouring unusually strong for a wartime production. The book itself is also in excellent condition, the cloth clean and firm, the contents naturally toned owing to thin war-economy paper, but clean and well preserved.
The book presents seven airmen’s stories in Graves’s semi-documentary style, mixing reportage, reconstruction and patriotic wartime fiction. It reflects the RAF’s public image at a crucial point in the war: technical, courageous, youthful, and increasingly central to Britain’s military identity.
Ordinary copies survive, but usually with tired jackets or none at all. A particularly strong RAF association copy in exceptional jacketed condition.
