Overblown myths

Congratulations to Nick Hewitt for pointing out a few home truths about the Battle of Britain ( The Forgotten Battle of Britain, January). Sadly, if previous revisionism is anything to go by, his views will have as little permanence as sandcastles on the beach.

How many people now remember the work of Duncan Grinnell-Milne in 1958 or Wing Commander Hubert Allen DFC in 1974, to mention just two authors with a similar argument? In reality, Winston Churchill cynically subverted the story of our finest hour to suit a Conservative political agenda, and before the conflict ended had successfully placed almost the entire credit for survival with a small pilot elite, enabling the Royal Air Force to ‘own the battle’ by 1945. No place any more, then, for sailors, soldiers, emergency workers or civilians ‘taking it’. Government and media agencies enthusiastically cooperated, with the result that most journalists and members of the public still unquestioningly accept the story rolled out by Churchill and the Air Ministry.

Mostly, this is because the myths make a wonderfully inspiring story, while emphasising how lone pilots battled impossible odds and stopped the invasion plays to our sense of Britishness. It may be a sound sentiment, but one that makes us all vulnerable to the overblown claims of those in sections of the British political class, industry, academia and the RAF with self-serving motives for keeping the myths alive. Why do historians bother?

Anthony J Cumming, Devon