Basil Collier. Heavenly Adventurer: Sefton Brancker and the Dawn of British Aviation. London: Secker & Warburg, 1959. A big wheel in the RFC, for most of the 1920s he was in charge of civil aviation at the Air Ministry. He was killed in the R101 disaster in 1930.

Peter Lewis. The British Fighter Since 1912: Sixty-seven Years of Design and Development. London: Putnam, 1979. 4th edition. A companion to The British Bomber, which I already have.

W.J. Reader. Architect of Air Power: The Life of the First Viscount Weir, 1877-1959. London: Collins, 1968. A Scottish industrialist, Weir was the second Air Minister (1918-9) and in the late 1930s came back to help plan the RAF's expansion. It's clearly an authorised biography, as the copyright is owned by the second Viscount Weir!

J.M. Spaight. The Sky's the Limit: A Study of British Air Power. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1940. Spaight was one of the main aviation writers of his day, though I don't think I'd heard of this one before. It's about 'the air power that is being fashioned, grimly, remorselessly, by this war-hating, war-winning, Empire of ours', written for an audience made curious by the war (this edition was published in August 1940, and includes a summary of the 'Victory at Dunkirk').

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