Richard Hillary

Flight Lieutenant Richard Hope Hillary (20 April 1919 – 8 January 1943) was an Anglo-Australian Royal Air Force fighter pilot during the Second World War.

[5] Hillary was called up to the Royal Air Force in October 1939 and in July 1940, having completed his training, he was posted to B Flight, No.

It remained to be seen whether I could fight in one.On 3 September 1940 he had just made his fifth "kill" when he was shot down by a Messerschmitt Bf 109 flown by Hauptmann Helmuth Bode of II./JG 26:[7] I was peering anxiously ahead, for the controller had given us warning of at least fifty enemy fighters approaching very high.

One Messerschmitt went down in a sheet of flame on my right, and a Spitfire hurtled past in a half-roll; I was weaving and turning in a desperate attempt to gain height, with the machine practically hanging on the airscrew.

I closed in to 200 yards, and from slightly to one side gave him a two-second burst: fabric ripped off the wing and black smoke poured from the engine, but he did not go down.

At that moment, I felt a terrific explosion which knocked the control stick from my hand, and the whole machine quivered like a stricken animal.

Regaining his senses whilst falling through space, he deployed a parachute and landed in the North Sea, where he was subsequently rescued by lifeboat Lord Southborough (ON 688) from the Margate Station.

He endured three months of repeated surgery in an attempt to repair the damage to his hands and face, and went on to become one of the best known members of McIndoe's "Guinea Pig Club".

He wrote an account of his experiences, published in 1942 under the title Falling Through Space in the United States, and as The Last Enemy in Great Britain.

[...] My arms were propped up in front of me, the fingers extended like witches' claws, and my body was hung loosely on straps just clear of the bed.

What was not absorbed was to be sliced off when I came in for my next operation, a new upper lip.In 1941, Hillary persuaded the British authorities to send him to America to rally support for Britain's war effort.

While in the United States, he spoke on the radio, had a love affair with the actress Merle Oberon, and drafted much of The Last Enemy.

[9] Hillary managed to bluff his way back into a flying position even though, as was noted in the officers' mess, he could barely handle a knife and fork.

He returned to service with No 54 Operational Training Unit at RAF Charterhall after recovering from his injuries, for a conversion course to pilot night fighter aircraft.

[11][12] A funeral took place at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on 25 January 1943 at 12:30pm, followed by the cremation of his body at Golders Green Crematorium, where he is commemorated on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial.

Lecturers have included Sebastian Faulks, Beryl Bainbridge (2000), Ian McEwan (2001), Julian Barnes (2002), Graham Swift (2003), Jeanette Winterson (2004), Mark Haddon (2005), Monica Ali (2006), Philip Pullman (2007), Howard Jacobson (2008), Colm Tóibín (2009), Carol Ann Duffy (2010), Tom Stoppard (2011), Andrew Motion (2012), Anne Enright (2013), Will Self (2014), Simon Armitage (2015) and David Hare (2016).