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Hello and welcome to Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator,

and this week I'm joined by the aviation historian Roland White, whose new book Harrier 809,

Britain's legendary jump jet and the untold story of the Falklands War, comes out in October.

I'm also very pleased to be joined by one of the men without whom this book,

and the Falklands War, would not have been possible.

Commander Tim Gedge, who was the CO of 809 Naval Air Squadron,

one of the three squadrons of Harriers,

dispatched to the Falklands in the early 80s.

Welcome both.

Thanks, Anne.

Lovely to be joining you. And likewise from me. Now, Roland, if I may start just by asking you, how did the sort

of book begin to come together? The Falklands is a subject that's been gone over quite a lot by

historians in the last sort of 30 years. What was it the convincingty there was a

new story to be told here and what got you excited about it? Well, I mean, the Falklands War first

captured my imagination as an 11-year-old boy, as it did so many of my generation. And I knew

through that interest that there'd been two very, very good accounts of the Sea Harrier's

war in the Falklands written in the form of Sharky Ward's

Sea Harrier over the Falklands and Dave Morgan's hostile skies, both of which are about the two different squadrons, front line squadrons, that went down with the carriers initially.

But I was also aware that alongside that,

...