Flights of Fantasy: An Evocation of Life During and Between Two World Wars

My name is George Munday. I was born on 11 January 1904 in Ramsgate, a thriving fishing port in Kent on the south-east English coast.

Dad was a skipper on a wooden, clinker-built fishing smack on which I often spent summer days during my childhood. It was a stroke of luck that I was out with him on the never-to-be-forgotten morning in 1909, when I saw Louis Blériot crossing the Channel. That early brush with aviation became a life-changing moment reflected in my art, and a passion I shared with Ignatius Iggulden, better known as Iggy; flier, writer, raconteur and the life-long friend who cajoled me into writing this book.

It's been a long journey. Reading training manuals and notes. Talking to acquaintances, friends, family and relatives. Reliving half-forgotten and buried memories that perhaps should have stayed that way.

I recalled with fondness my life-changing train journey from Ramsgate to Liverpool in 1918 when I met Iggy; with sadness, my unfulfilled ambition to join the RAF; with thanks for the camaraderie of fire-fighting colleagues during the Liverpool Blitz; and with a shudder at the frequent attempts of the Luftwaffe to blow us into oblivion.

Now my story is complete. A miscellany in which fact and fantasy have been merged to give colour and atmosphere to life-changing events in the 20th century.