The man who saved London — the life of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park

In February 1947, at the New Zealand Society’s annual dinner in London, the head of the Royal Air Force stood up to talk about a New Zealander who had not been invited to speak for himself. The speaker was Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, the Chief of the Air Staff. The man he was discussing was Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Rodney Park, recently retired, lately the Allied Air Commander in South-East Asia, and before that the man who held London’s sky in 1940. Tedder said, simply, that if any one man had won the Battle of Britain...