Spitfire Summer: The People's Eye-View of the Battle of Britain by Peter Haining

SPITFIRE SUMMER: THE PEOPLE'S EYE-VIEW OF THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN BY PETER HAINING. HARDCOVER, FULLY INTACT DUST JACKET, 1990 FIRST EDITION, 208 PAGES, NO INSCRIPTIONS OR NAMES, IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.

"Published in 1990, 'Spitfire Summer' looks at the Battle of Britain in the summer months of 1940 from the perspective of the UK public. This often means looking at the information that they were being fed, including BBC broadcasts, newspaper reports, poster campaigns and so forth. Little attempt is made to correct the impressions given by these sources, but you certainly come away with a fine idea of the level of propaganda being dished out. There are a lot of photos and other illustrations, many of them sourced from news agency archives, and as a result they suffer from poor cataloguing in the years since. This means that there are quite a few pics shown out of context - purporting to be from the time of the Battle of Britain but actually pre-war or late war. Somehow, a German propaganda shot of a mock combat between a captured Spitfire and a Dornier 17 ends up captioned as a 'rare' piece of film footage of a combat in July 1940." - Online review