Richard Holmes

Alfred, Lord Tennyson might provide one kind of answer; his reputation cast into deep shadow by the beard he sported in later life and his elevation to Poet Laureate during the high Victorian era, aged but 40.

Military historian Richard Holmes turns his attention to the infamous First World War trench line, the Western Front....

Holmes wraps his arguments in an exquisite cloak of many colours, sewn from stories of myriad different lives....

From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to test the air, to brave generals floating over enemy lines to watch troop movements, this wonderful book offers a seamless fusion of history, art, science, biography and the metaphysics of flight....