In response to the Motor Car Act 1903 raising the speed limit to a mere 20 mph, in 1904 he went to the Isle of Man where, with permission of his cousin the Governor, he started the TT races.

[2] Orde served throughout the First World War, starting by becoming a second lieutenant in the Army Service Corps on 15 August 1914.

[8] He was a lieutenant when he qualified as a pilot for the Royal Flying Corps in a Maurice Farman biplane on 10 May 1916.

His home address for delivery of the medal was given as Apsley House, Piccadilly – his father-in-law's house on Hyde Park Corner; Orde had married Lady Eileen Wellesley daughter of Arthur Wellesley, 4th Duke of Wellington, in 1916.

His younger brother Herbert Walter Julian Orde joined the navy before the war.

An episode of bravery aboard HMS Helmuth in November 1914 saw him awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in April 1915.

His entries in phone directories for forty years – from 1929 up to his death in 1968 – list him as him "Orde, Cuthbert; Artist".

He was selected either by Group Headquarters or by the station commander and, generally speaking, four or five in each squadron were chosen, the four or five who were considered the most valuable.

So it was for them rather in the nature of a mention in dispatches, I merely being the scribe who wrote out the dispatch.Taking around two hours per picture, Orde drew men whose names have become familiar to those interested in the history of the Battle; Douglas Bader, Sailor Malan, Robert Stanford Tuck, Johnnie Johnson, Archie McKellar, John Freeborn.

On finishing his drawing of Hugh Dundas, Orde joked, "I've left room for the DFC.

John Drummond was drawn on 5 October 1940, shortly after landing from what turned out to be his final kill, and is pictured still in his aviator jacket instead of the uniformed outfit Orde commonly depicted.

[28] However, having flown in combat himself and lost both his brothers in military incidents twenty years earlier, the proximity of death will not have been new to Orde.

I think a squadron of pilots can be divided into three groups: natural leaders and fighters at the top; then the main body of solid talent containing the germ of leaders of the future, chaps whose qualities will develop with experience; and then I suppose the tail, two or three perhaps, who will never be quite good enough to earn distinction but who nevertheless are pulling their weight for all it may be worth.Despite this, he was adamant that the airmen's extraordinary deeds were the doings of ordinary people.

They are not a race apart.The drawings had already appeared in magazines even before the book was published, and have been continually reprinted in a wide variety of publications ever since.

Orde remained a professional artist, and was still taking commissions for military portraits long after the war, such as one of Air Chief Marshal Sir James Robb in 1958.

[31] In 1962 a book review in Flight magazine declared, "Cuthbert Orde...whom no-one has managed to convey more effectively the character and courage of RAF fighter pilots".