The Song of the Rose

The Song of the Rose is a historical novel about the pioneer airmen of the Royal Flying Corps, set on the Western Front during the First World War. It's the story of fictional character Joe Graham, an educated working class lad who, having started his war in the trenches, first becomes an observer and then eventually a Sopwith Camel pilot during the period 1916 - 1918. The story is full of his adventures with real and imagined characters and encompasses the great battles of the Somme and Passchendaele as observed from the air. It also deals with the big questions around the conduct of the war, the unimaginable waste of millions of young lives and the unpredictable hand of Fate that took so many and spared so few.