Product Description

Described by critics as 'not a book written by a pilot about the war, but a book written by a writer about a pilot', "The Last Enemy" tells the story of a young writer's experiences as a Spitfire pilot in training and during the Battle of Britain, and of the life he led after being shot down. Richard Hillary begins his story with a gripping account of his flight from Hornchurch on 3 September 1940, up and out over the Channel and into ferocious aerial combat, 'a blur of twisting machines and tracer bullets'. His plane hit and hurtling towards the water, Richard bails out of the flaming cockpit and parachutes into the Channel where, hours later, he is eventually rescued by the Margate lifeboat. "The Last Enemy" then tells the extraordinary and moving story surrounding that September day. It describes carefree days at Trinity College, Oxford, light-hearted competitive rowing in Germany and Hungary, training as a fighter pilot, aerial combat and then, after being shot down and cruelly burnt by the flames, of a slow and painful recovery. Richard tells also of great friendship and of tragic loss and - in yet more sombre tones - of intense and agonising personal reflection and questioning about his own war experience, which transformed him from a gifted and handsome athlete, admired and envied by his contemporaries, into a ravaged figure. Unsure of whether or not he would ever be passed fit enough to fly again, Richard asks himself what he can do for those who have died? This commemorative edition of "The Last Enemy", with a foreword by D M W to whom the book was originally dedicated, is being published on 20 April, Richard Hillary's birthday, and in 2003, sixty years after his death.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #545847 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 196 pages

About the Author
Richard Hillary

Customer Reviews

Battle of Britain and recovery
This is a beautifully written account of one pilot's participation in a crucial WW2 battle. The author spent only a relatively brief period in action; but his description of his privileged period at Oxford, and of fighter training at the beginning of World War 2, are worth reading in their own right.

However, the real subject of this book is the recovery (sadly incomplete) he made from the horrific burns suffered after being shot down on the first anniversary of the outbreak of War. Burns treatment was crude before the outbreak of WW2, and shot-down pilots were the guinea pigs who enabled huge advances in this field to be made. (Hillary's plastic surgeon was the great Sir Archibald McIndoe.) Hillary's courage in fighting his way to this recovery, and the candour with which he describes it, make this book the best memoir I have read of the War.

A story of companionship, compassion and untold bravery.
Richard Hilary led a charmed life, born of well to do parents,handsome, an education at Oxbridge and a bright career ahead of him. Then WWII hits, Richard becomes a pilot with his schooltime chums, is shot down and left bobbing in the North Sea for hours. He suffers from horrific scarring and gnarled and contorted hands. He then undergoes painful plastic surgery which is in it's infancy. Richard documents how all of his friends are killed in the war, the sympathy he has to face and his fight to get back up in the skies. This is the best true story about friendship and compassion you'll ever read. A classic from WWII.

A strangely willing guinea pig
The last enemy is not death, but fear. Richard Hillary was fearless to the point of arrogance, and he was among the finest prose writers of his generation, many of whose lives were cut short by the Second World War.

This book charts most of Hillary's life: staring down his Oxbridge colleagues on matters of religion; touring Europe as a rowing Blue; qualifying as an RAF pilot. Hillary was a clever young man who was reportedly hard to like, possessed of a cold determination to thrust his way forward in the world on his own terms, using the strength of his formidable intellect.

Hillary joined the RAF, and was to be shot down in flames, suffering terrible burns, during the Battle of Britain. Fished from the sea barely alive with his skin hanging in tatters, he soon became one of the "Guinea Pigs," burns patients of the pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe.

Hillary would have us believe that he reacted to pain with irony, that he flouted death and laughed in the face of disfigurement. But this smacks of bravado. He seems determined to show that fear and pain may be conquered by the intellect alone. In all events, he returned to operational flying - against all advice - and shortly afterwards lost his life. Victory or waste? Who can say?

Hillary was a brilliant writer and this is a fine book. Both ascetic and heroic, lofty and accessible, it bears comparison with the best of T.E. Lawrence. Hillary was well connected in Great Britain and indeed Hollywood, and he would have become a household name had he backed away in time from his obsessive confrontation between mind and death.