Sagitarrius Rising - Folio Society

The First World War was the most savage and grotesque of wars. Yet from the mud of the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg, Frederick Manning in his classic work "The Middle Parts of Fortune", Blunden and Williamson all showed that great poetry and prose can raise and enhance the human spirit, transforming horror without diminishing it. This is what makes Sagitarrius Rising a classic work on war and the definite account of aerial combat during the First World War.

Sent to France with the Royal Flying Corps at just 17, and later a member of the famous 56 Squadron, Cecil Lewis was an illustrious and passionate fighter pilot of the First World War, described by Bernard Shaw in 1935 as 'a thinker, a master of words, and a bit of a poet'. In this vivid and spirited account the author evocatively sets his love of the skies and flying against his bitter experience of the horrors of war, as we follow his progress from France and the battlefields of the Somme, to his pioneering defence of London against deadly night time raids.

Cecil Lewis
Hardcover in slipcase,Folio Socirty 1998 230pp

Fine/Fine