Mick Mannock, Fighter Pilot

"Mick Mannock, Fighter Pilot tells the exciting story of the staunch socialist who became Britain's most successful fighter pilot of the First World War. It traces the myth of the 'ace with one eye', examining how Mannock has been represented in biography and also in fiction. Why is he still commemorated today in Canterbury, where he grew up in poverty, and in Wellingborough, where he first became involved in the Labour movement? Mannock's collaborative approach to aerial combat is traced back to his socialist beliefs, and his engineering background is seen as a crucial factor in his surviving seventeen months of deadly fighting high above the trenches. Had he lived, would Mannock have fitted into the interwar Labour Party, or been attracted to more extremist alternatives? This question prompts a wider discussion of the party's feelings towards socialists such as Attlee and Dalton who 'had a good war'."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.