From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 122)

I fly rather well. I do it as I do most things, in my own unique manner. This does not make me a bad pilot. I have walked away from every landing I have made. In my book this makes them all hugely successful. While it has become something of an in-joke among my intimates that my flying is erratic, I hold that even at the very worst, it is no more than idiosyncratic.

You must remember that I learned to fly during the Great War. I was not, as most young pilots were, given a training of some weeks. Basically, I had to get somewhere, and while they had found me a plane, there was no one who could be spared to fly me. Therefore, I climbed into that cockpit with very little idea of how the controls functioned, but a reasonable understanding, from my own education, of how life, and more importantly, gravity worked.

Of course, the planes then were very simple compared to what the RAF has now. It’s not an exaggeration to say they flew more on the pilot’s intuition than actual mechanics. It did mean I finally found out what the plans known as ‘the dancing sprite’ (which Alice and I retrieved during our race across the continent) did. It was a device that prevented a plane’s guns from shooting off the propellers, but rather through them at synchronised intervals.

But I digress, I have since approached planes much as I did that one flight during the Great War - as creatures to be wrestled with and tamed to one’s will. I put in enough hours to keep a licence of sorts, and to let me occasionally wear both the flying jacket and the great coat of the RAF. Both of them are distinct and far more stylish than anything the army has ever produced, and which, naturally, suit me.