Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer by Alastair Panton, read by Jonathan Keeble.

As I write, I can clearly recall the stinging heat of a burning Blenheim, smells, tastes, expressions, sounds of voices and, most of all, fear gripping deep in me.

Flying Officer Alastair Panton was just 23 when his squadron deployed across the Channel in the defence of France. They were desperate days.

Pushed back to the beaches as the German blitzkrieg rolled through the Low Countries and into France, by June 4th 1940 the evacuation of the Allies from Dunkirk was complete. A little over two weeks later France surrendered.

Flying vital, dangerous, low-level missions throughout the campaign in support of the troops on the ground, Panton's beloved but unarmed Bristol Blenheim was easy meat for the marauding Messerschmitts. At the height of fighting he was losing two of his small squadron's crews to the enemy every day.

Discovered in a box by his grandchildren after his death in 2002, Alastair Panton's Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer is a lost classic. One of the most moving, vivid and powerful accounts of war in the air ever written. And an unforgettable testament to the courage, stoicism, camaraderie and humanity of Britain's greatest generation.