In 1979 Motörhead frontman, Lemmy, dedicated the band's third album Bomber to Len Deighton, as it was his novel that had inspired the title track. A fascinating, tightly-written chronicle of many lives on or between two continents across 24 hours. Some of the ancillary characters are a bit more stereotyped, like the German secret policeman who tries to prove that one of the fliers is sabotaging the war effort, but even he has a less formalised counterpart among the British officers.

Brittain was a novelist, a prominent member of London’s cultural scene, and when she referred to the British public’s acquiescence as a failure of imagination, she was locating the failure, at least in part, with the community she belonged to: the custodians of the national imagination.

He is not using Bomber to debate the rightness or wrongness of the Allied air campaigns over Germany (or, by implication, Japan).

Deighton continuously points to the experiences of German soldiers and aviators on the eastern front which creates a great deal of sarcasm and anti-Nazi commentary among those who survived Stalin’s armies. He also interviewed many British and German veterans and civilians and flew in most of the planes described in the book. Bomber Command, chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the best ninety-nine novels in English published since 1939. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time.The stonework continued to expand until, with an earth-shaking roar, it released the roof upon the burning interior.

Deep in detail, the plot follows the planning, execution and conclusion of a bombing raid during World War Two. But what is hardest of all to understand is that these raids were launched to weaken the will of their enemies in Germany and Japan. He is ‘uncommissioned’; he is by far the most able airman in the squadron but didn’t go to the right school, so no officers’ mess for him.

At the pastoral Bomber Command aerodrome in Warley fen, Sam Lambert, preparing for his forty-sixth bombing raid, rashly questions the strategy of destruction. Pages age toning , jacket edges insect nibbled, with rear flap almost detached, now in a new protective sleeve holding it all in position. He had his name removed from the credits of the film, however, which was a move that he later described as "stupid and infantile. The fact that the reader is able to remember and identify with each individual character, represents a great achievement by Deighton. Since this was published in 1971, word processors was not something anyone had, so maybe he is right.

Told through the eyes of ordinary people in the air and on the ground – from a young pilot to the inhabitants of a small town in the Ruhr – Bomber is an unforgettable portrayal of individuals caught up in the wreckage of war.However, the German pilots are not able to prevent the disaster that was about to fall on the small German village. If you cannot hit power plants and weapons factories and ammunition depots with any precision, then you make a virtue out of indiscriminately leveling neighborhoods.