Winkle: The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Greatest Pilot

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Further research into official records called into question other aspects of Eric’s early life. I started to see from the where the character of Eric was born, developed and blossomed. He was every bit the hard-bitten professional and the martinet in the beginning and then I saw how the national treasure aspect came about too. The next problem was keeping the word count down. That meant re-writing and editing – author’s hate to cut words but my publisher, Rowland White came up with a solution – detailed captions on a hundred photographs, many not seen before. Beaver has long pondered how these connections to Germany came about. “I can’t work it out and the family have no idea,” he says. “Near Galashiels there was a big German prisoner-of-war camp [during the First World War].

Now, drawing on previously unseen documents and unfettered access to Winkle's own personal archive, Paul Beaver uncovers the complex and enigmatic man behind the legend - the real story of Britain's greatest pilot.

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That was down to coincidence,” says Beaver. “He happened to fly to Celle, which is the nearest town, the morning that the British troops went in to liberate Belsen. There were rumoured to be some German jets nearby and he wanted to go have a look.” A] thumping great biography by Britain's leading aviation historian' DAILY MAIL, 'BOOK OF THE WEEK'

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Admiralty Official Collection - IWM / Public Domain 2. He rode in a ‘wall of death’ stunt – with a real lion Small in stature but immense in reputation and talent, there was more to Eric 'Winkle' Brown than met the eye. The big revelation is that Brown's origins were far more humble than he ever admitted. And in the class-conscious Royal Navy, that was not a career-enhancing situation. Especially when you are a Naval Aviator, the sort of person who had limited career prospects to begin with in the RN. (I will state categorically that had Brown flown for the USN, he would have made Rear Admiral. The only question is whether he would have retired as Commander, Naval Air Test Center - or as Commander, Naval Air Systems Command.) He is a great record-breaker – 487 types of aeroplanes flown – no-one will ever do that again,” says Beaver. Brown flight-tested Luftwaffe aircraft captured by the Allies and was at the forefront of helping to pioneer ground-breaking jet engine technology and chase ever-faster speeds. What is remarkable is that he was arrested on September 3, 1939. Had they not released him, there would be no biography of Eric Brown. He would have been interned for the duration of the war. He wouldn’t have become a pilot.”Eric 'Winkle' Brown was Britain's greatest pilot. His extraordinary flying career saw him fight in the Battle of Britain, narrowly escape death on a torpedoed aircraft carrier, achieve a litany of new records and firsts as a test pilot, and fly more kinds of aircraft than any other pilot in history. As befits a man who is both a Conservative MP and biographer of the political philosophers Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, Norman understands the interplay of power and influence innately. His debut novel channels the style and approach of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, depicting the bitter struggle for preferment and position between the scholar Francis Bacon and the lawyer Edward Coke in the Elizabethan court. Similarities to the murkiness of contemporary politics are surely coincidental. Act of Oblivion The daring life and astonishing adventures of Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown - Britain's greatest-ever pilot. If you look at his life, he had a scholarship to the Royal High School in Edinburgh, studied at Edinburgh University and commanded a squadron and an air station at Lossiemouth. He is a Scot, sounded like a Scot and played rugby for Scotland as an adolescent. Beaver recounts the story of a man he regarded as a mentor in unshowy but fascinating detail, and restores a British hero to his rightful place' OBSERVER

The carriage filled with young children arriving in Scotland remains a poignant image. “Everyone wanted girls and he was, I think, the only boy on the train. It is very sad when you reflect on it now, but if it hadn’t have happened, I don’t think we would have had the same Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown.” That immediately called into question Eric’s autobiography and our perceived knowledge. It also led to six years of research, writing, re-writing and editing. There were searching questions and my aim of writing about the man not the machines came sharply into focus. The Winkle biography has its gestation in 2009 at what we all thought was Captain Eric Brown’s 90th birthday. We discussed a biography, and I followed it up a little later to get a typical Eric response: ‘of course, dear boy but start work after I have passed on.’ By the way, he was only 89.Another detail that Beaver disproved during his research was Brown’s claim that his father Robert served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. “I did get his father’s military record and he was in the Royal Flying Corps, but not as a pilot – he was a labourer working on the observation balloons.” Brown’s excellent German language skills saw him briefly pressed into action as a translator. “That 12-to-18-hour period shaped his life,” adds Beaver. “He said the smell of Belsen and the sheer horror of Belsen never escapes you.” With a life as remarkable as his flying, Brown faced imprisonment in Germany at the outbreak of WWII, and after the Allied victory his fluent German saw him interviewing senior Nazi officials and participating in the liberation of Belsen - an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life. Brown rubbed shoulders with myriad people throughout his life, from “the Royal family to Shirley Bassey to astronauts to German war criminals”. He even performed on stage with the legendary Glenn Miller Orchestra in late 1944.