The Battle of Britain: A boy’s dreams and a family’s legacy

My great-grandfather called me ‘Baron’, after the Red Baron, indulging my dreams of becoming a fighter pilot.

July 10 marks the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. While it was far away from Australia, as a lad growing up in 1980s Far North Queensland, my boyhood imagination soared over the skies of 1940 Britain.

The Battle of Britain wasn’t just history to me. It was an obsession. Fuelled by Paul Brickhill’s Reach for the Sky and my hero-worship of Sir Douglas Bader, Airfix models of Hurricanes, Spitfires, Me-109s, and Me-110s filled my bedroom, each plastic kit a tribute to the RAF’s defiance.

Now in my 50s, that fascination endures, reinvigorated by a recently discovered family connection to another wartime theatre and a career that brought me tantalisingly close to my boyhood dream of becoming a fighter pilot.

In the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall wrote:

Today marks 85 years since the Battle of Britain. Michael de Percy writes, ‘The Battle of Britain, fought from July to October 1940, was far from dull. Hitler’s Luftwaffe aimed to crush the RAF, clearing the skies for an invasion of Britain. Outnumbered, the RAF’s pilots in Hurricanes and Spitfires, often barely out of their teens, fought back with ferocity. Churchill’s ‘The Few’ speech captured their sacrifice: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”’

My latest in The Spectator Australia, The Battle of Britain: A boy’s dreams and a family’s legacy.

July 10 marks the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. While it was far away from Australia, as a lad growing up in 1980s Far North Queensland, my boyhood imagination soared over the skies of 1940 Britain.https://t.co/NgevON4KDa

— The Spectator Australia (@SpectatorOz) July 10, 2025