Two days before the start of the Second World War, a young man from Linlithgow – whose father came from the Hebridean island of Tiree – was called up by the RAF.

Charles McLean spent seventeen months training for the role of navigator in Coastal Command, before starting operational duty in 217 Squadron flying out of St Eval in Cornwall. Six months later he went missing in action. Largely using his own words from letters home and photographs from his locker, this book gives an engaging and deeply personal account of life in the RAF in the first two years of war.

Dr John Holliday and Fiona Wilson – An Iodhlann Press 2021, 161 pages.