I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety

My dad, Norman Buckle, was sent to H.M.S. Royal Arthur (Skegness, Lincolnshire) for induction training into the Royal Navy in October 1942. Read more in I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II. Please visit our website to find out more about our books. http://www.spurwing-ebooks.com

After I retired I spent many a happy hour researching both my own and my husband's family histories. Eventually though, I came to a dead end after I had explored every aspect of the lives of even the most distant relatives. I had already sorted through a box of old photos that had been in the loft for years and had labelled as many of them as I could. Now I turned my attention to an old, homemade, hard backed notebook with the initials N.B stencilled on the deteriorating hessian cover. I knew that this was a collection of photographs and postcards that my dad, Norman Buckle, had stuck in the book accompanied by captions in his tiny, precise handwriting. Folded into the book were lots of pages torn from an old diary for 1943 and several sheets of notepaper covered in that same spidery handwriting. This was to become the starting point for my book I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of a Petty Officer in the Fleet Air Arm during World War Two . Link to amazon UK book pa

I downloaded this book because I thought it was going to be reminiscences about the Fleet Air Arm in the post WWII era which it was; but it was so much more as well. After a detailed and fascinating account of the author’s service in the Fleet Air Arm, it recounts his subsequent career in the British state education system. Author Christopher Jarman, who is approaching his eightieth birthday by my calculation, has had an amazingly rich and seemingly fulfilling life. He was educated on a scholarship at a public school as part of a social experiment in egalitarianism; he wanted to be a pilot but became an observer and officer in the Fleet Air Arm travelling the world in the process; he became inspired by the thought of teaching primary age children and after teacher training had an inspirational career as a class teacher, head teacher, local authority adviser and college lecturer; he developed his artistic talents and became an expert in calligraphy and handwriting which he taught

I borrowed a wonderful book of photographs from my local public library and have enjoyed looking at it so much have renewed it three times. Fleet Air Arm in Camera 1912 – 1996 by Roger Hayward tells the story of the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy from its inception to the end of the twentieth century. It draws on a photographic record from both The Public Records Office and The Fleet Air Arm Museum. It’s a fantastic mix of photographs: close-ups; action photos; aerial views of shore bases and at sea; people, ships and planes. Each photograph is accompanied by an informative caption and occasional quirky details. I was particularly interested in the photograph on page 82 of a Leading Wren (Pat Lees) who was one of the first WRNS to fly as part of her regular duties. She was a radio mechanic too like my dad and it was interesting to see the size of the radios they had to handle. When I was researching the background to I Think I Prefer the Tinned Variety: The Diary of

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