derek robinson

Many readers have said they were amazed that I couldn't find a publisher for my new titles. Well, the book business is a mystery to me too, and after a string of rejection slips (the most charming of which said: "We feel your book would not sit comfortably in our fiction list," which made me think I'd offered How To Be A Serial Killer to the publisher of Enid Blyton) I became a self-publisher. Hard work, although the response from readers all over the globe was encouraging.




Now I've signed a contract with MacLehose Press, best known for publishing Steig Larsson's Millennium-trilogy (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest) which had a stranglehold on the best-seller lists for so long. MacLehose will reissue my WW2/RAF quartet, starting next summer with Piece of Cake and Hullo Russia, Goodbye England. After that, we'll see.



Meanwhile, back to the offers. Buy any book (or books) and I'll throw in either a free copy of Goshawk Squadron, signed and inscribed if you wish, or a free copy of War Story. In the UK and Europe, all books except Hornet's Sting are £10 each, including postage. Elsewhere, each book is £15 including airmail postage. Hornet's Sting, being bigger and heavier, is £15 in UK and Europe and £20 elsewhere. And please, if you email me an order, tell me what country you're in. I'm not clairvoyant.



Goshawk Squadron is a brisk and blackly funny read (12 fastmoving chapters, 218 pages) about the Royal Flying Corps in the darkest days of 1918. Got shortlisted for the Booker Prize and might even have won it. Nina Bawden, in the Daily Telegraph, called it: "The most readable novel of the year...I laughed aloud, several times. And was, in the end, reduced to tears." Claire Tomalin, in The Observer, said: "Goshawk Squadron has the authoritative ring of a little classic on the subject of war."



War Story, a sort of prequel to Goshawk Squadron, gives an RFC view of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The Daily Mail said: "This book is marvellous in technical detail on the first fragile days of kites in conflict - and by far the sweetest, most cynical modern story of that 'lovely war'."