Music

Achtung, Achtung. Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and with James Holland.

And we are joined by a very special guest today who sent us PDFs of the second draft,

or the final approved draft, I don't know what can't remember which draft it was.

The other day, and I've been racing through this book, it's a monumental work.

Who are we talking to today, James?

Well, I've been really looking forward to this. We're talking to an old friend of mine.

Now, General Ben Kite. So he's a general in the army, military intelligence is your background, isn't it Ben?

And you wrote a fantastic book on the British and Canadian armies in Normandy called Stout Hearts,

which I've used shamelessly over and over.

It's a stupendous book.

Absolutely. And now you've done a two volume history of the RAF and Commonwealth Air Forces in the Second World War.

It's a hell of a thing. I mean, it really is.

The detail, the kind of the granular level which you've managed to dig down is amazing.

And fantastic also to see all those statistics and photographs and stuff incorporated into the books,

which you've managed to plunder very cleverly from Seb Cox and Co over at the Air Historical Branch.

It's brilliant that archive has been properly used.

So many congratulations. Well, thank you. Well, thank you. It's brilliant to be here.

I think after those joshing words, I feel I ought to just leave now because I don't think it's going to get any better.

So I'm glad you had a chance to just flick through volume two of the recent book.

And I completely agree, James. The photographs that the Air Historical Branch have.

And also people at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne and the Royal Australia Air Force Museum.

...