Under an English Heaven [Paperback]

The novel is convincing in its detail about English life and the war in the air over Germany. It gathers momentum and conviction throughout its 430 pages. The last mission of Hooper and his crew - like the first day on the Somme in Sebastian Faulks's'Birdsong' - is almost unbearable in its suspense and in the pressure that has built up behind it. The courage and devotion of the fliers, which you become increasingly aware of as the novel progresses makes the wasting of lives all the harder to bear.

This is a war novel with little or no macho behaviour, but much realism. It is a peace novel, too, because the world of the Suffolk village counterpoints the world of the 520th Bombardment Group. Bedenham is a constant reminder of the normal rhythms and relationships of society, of which the war is a huge, vivid, engrossing disruption.

There are some good scenes in London - American officers thronging the smart hotels, English tarts hustling in Piccadilly, Southwark in an air raid. There are some good scenes, too, in grand houses and small cottages around Suffolk as the English, sidelined, with their young men away in Africa and Asia, try to make sense of the war and the irruption of the Yanks into their lives. But the real srength of the novel is in the depiction of the moulding of Hooper's disparate crew of 10 fliers into a band of brothers - to borrow the title of a TV series that was itself borrowed from Henry V; and in the delicate, responsible adult relationship that grows up between John Hooper and Heather Garrett.

The book builds steadily to a searing climax, of which the less said in a review the better. And then there is a final chapter bringing the story into the 1980s, which is perhaps too pat.

The flying detail - the beauty of flying as well as the stress and the tension - is marvellously done. As a war novel this book is refreshingly free of either improbable heroics or gratuitous gore. It tells it, you feel, the way it probably was. It's not War and Peace. But it can go on the same bookshelf.

At times you really feel like you are up there with them - the dread when they are woken at 0500 hours on mission day and the tangible relief when the crew return home safely. The Bedenham villagers whose lives are weaved with that of the crew remind you that life continued in a fashion even in such trying times.

Its been a while since a book has made me care so much, indeed I was very sorry to finish it.

I read this one sunny afternoon sitting in my parents garden 30 miles north of RAF Duxford (home of the Imperial War museums historical aircraft collection). The sights, sounds & smells of wartime rural england are so intense that the sounds of 60 year old piston engines gradually approaching didn't seem unusual at all. It was only when a REAL B-17 ("Sally B" europes only airworthy example, not Misbehavin' Martha) roared overhead that I remembered it was 2003 not 1943.

The book is unusual in that it doesn't have a "main" character. Instead it concentrates on the lives of many people living on & around a typical USAAF airbase in the east of england. This technique has been used many times by many authors but rarely does it work quite this well. The fact that its a "first book" makes it even more of an achievement.

The whole book is superb but the ending is incredibly moving... this book is one of the greatest works of war fiction ever. Radcliffe is every bit the equal of Sebastian Faulks or Louis de'Bernierre and thats rare praise indeed. BUY THIS BOOK!