Extract from Lord Ashcroft's 'Heroes of the Skies'

The Zeppelin-slayer; the 'wing-walker'; the helicopter pilot who thwarted the IRA... In this extract from his major new book, Lord Ashcroft salutes Britain's greatest airmen  

It was Leonardo da Vinci who said: “When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” Mark Twain wrote: “The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be? It is the same the angels breathe.” While Sir Walter Raleigh, the official historian of the RAF (rather than his Elizabethan namesake), said: “The engine is the heart of an aeroplane, but the pilot is its soul.”

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