In the late summer of 1940 massive waves of Luftwaffe bombers pounded London and England's south east. These relentless daytime raids were meant to soften up London ahead of Operation Sea Lion, Hitler's masterplan for the invasion of Britain, scheduled for mid-September. It never happened, of course, because squadrons of RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires, flown with immense skill and bravery by young pilots such as Douglas Bader, fought against all the odds and cut the German bombers to pieces. The Battle of Britain was won and lost in the hazy sky at 20,000 feet above the Home Counties that summer.
Len, a 22-year-old draughtsman in civilian life, is a fighter pilot with the Volunteer Reserve. Stella is a radar operator. They meet and fall in love and as the summer unfolds in step with the war, so does their mutual destiny. Andrew Greig's skill as a story-teller is every bit as impressive as that of an ace pilot. His narrative's point of view changes continually, as do - via the device of a diary - the tenses in which the story is told. The result, immensely gripping and moving, is somewhat like seeing the central protagonists and their world through the lens of a continually circling camera. All the dimensions are here: the unreality of living in the midst of war, the almost bland way in which death arrives. The horror and the terror as life goes on.
All the while, love is central. As the boundaries of society dissolve and re-form around them, and a new era is born of war's necessities, Len and Stella's love is compressed, as if by a bomb, to its essence. Greig's achievement is to let us smell the flowers through the smoke, pain and confusion. This is a lovely book.
Peter Cunningham's new novel, Love in One Edition, will be published in February by Harvill