Steven J. Pemberton's Blog, page 12

Goals for 2018

This is what I want to achieve this year, in terms of writing and publishing:

- Publish the Plague & Poison audiobook. I'm most of the way through editing this, so it should be on sale in the next few weeks or so.

- Publish another audiobook, though I haven't decided which one yet.

- Complete the first draft of the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir.

- Publish the children's book that I wrote way back in 2016. This will require me to relearn how to draw. I got a B in my Art O-level, mumblety-mumble years ago, and I've drawn maps for some of the Barefoot Healer books, but I'm more than a little out of practice. I'm hoping it's like riding a bike (though I never learned how to do that, so I wouldn't know).

Stay tuned for updates throughout the year, or come back in December if you'd like to be surprised :-)

2017 retrospective

This is what I said I wanted to accomplish in 2017, in terms of reading and writing -

Publish The Reluctant Dragonrider, the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. (Done.)

Publish the audiobook of Death & Magic. (Done.)

Publish another audiobook. (Not done, though I've recorded Plague & Poison and am most of the way through editing it, so that should be on sale early next year.)

Start writing the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir. (Not done, though I've done some planning and outlining. Well - there are three and a bit days left in 2017, so I could jot down a few paragraphs and tick off this objective. But that would be cheating.)

Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. There are currently 56 unread books on my Kindle. I also have a few shelves of unread paperbacks that I ought to attack, with a view to getting rid of the ones that aren't worth re-reading. (I now have 36 unread books on my Kindle. I read a few of the paperbacks, but failed in my attempts to sneak them out to the nearest charity shop without Breda noticing...)

And as usual, I did a few things that weren't on the list. I took part in several book signings and public readings with the local writers' group, and helped to raise some money for various charities. I also had a short story accepted into a charity anthology. More about that next year, once I've been informed of a definite release date.

Come back in a few days to laugh at my wildly optimistic plans for 2018!

November's "writing progress"

This is the first month in quite a long time when I haven't done any writing or editing of new material. We were on holiday for the first week, and I spent most of the rest of the month working on the Plague & Poison audiobook. I'm pleased to say I'm about two-thirds of the way through recording and editing this.

After much delay, I finally published The Reluctant Dragonrider, which is on sale in ebook and print.

The local writers continue to do signings and readings. Tomorrow (2nd December) we're hosting the first event that we organised ourselves, raising money for Emmaus, a UK charity for the homeless.

No grass but on the golf courses

Breda and I spent a week in Tenerife recently, and it's become Breda's new favourite place.

We "won" the holiday after Breda entered a prize draw at the Ideal Home Show. I put "won" in quotes because a couple of other people we know who went to the show were offered the same holiday, so I suspect it's more of a "no one goes away from this show empty-handed" scenario. This perhaps isn't so surprising when you consider that the holiday company is selling timeshares. Though they get rather irritated if you call it that. Nowadays it's "fractional property ownership". The difference apparently is that with a traditional timeshare, you can only stay in one property, and you have to go in a specific week or fortnight every year. With fractional property ownership, you still buy a share of a holiday apartment, but the company owns resorts all over the world, and you can stay in any of them whenever you want.

I suppose if you're rich, and you have a lot of free time, and you like the sort of holidays that involve a lot of being in or near an outdoor swimming pool, there's something to be said for buying into a scheme that guarantees the standard of the facilities and service on your holidays. But Breda and I are, to use that shopworn phrase, not in the target market. The target market isn't even in the same county as us. Even though we meet the company's financial criteria, the initial offer that the sales rep put in front of us would have cost two months' income per year. The "today only" offer that they came up with when they saw we weren't going for the initial one would have cost merely one month's income per year. Based on the percentage of the apartment we would've been buying, and the price of that little piece, the company was effectively saying their apartments are worth three to five times the going rate for a holiday apartment in Tenerife. I'm sure it's all perfectly legal, but I'd say there are some nasty surprises in store if any big creditors decide to call in their loans.

All carping aside, they did put us in a very nice apartment, easily the biggest and most luxurious place I've ever stayed in for a holiday. The resort is on the side of a hill, and we had stunning views of the town, the ocean, and the mountains further inland.





Near the beach, the British ex-pats have all but taken over - the only clues that you're not in Blackpool or Southend are the street signs and the more reliable weather. Well, that and the fact that all the traffic is on the wrong side of the road. And the fact you won't see any grass unless you go to a golf course. The south of the island, where we stayed, is very dry. (The north gets more rain, but we didn't visit it.) There are no rivers or natural lakes, and so most of the plants are of species that can cope with very little water. Grass isn't one of those plants, so it doesn't grow there, unless someone is willing to water it constantly.



We went on three excursions, the first of which was to do some stargazing in Teide National Park. Teide is the volcano in the centre of the island. The coach took us to about 7,000 feet above sea level, which is normally above most of the cloud. On this particular evening, there was some cloud and mist, so we didn't see as many stars as I'd hoped. Breda remarked she'd seen more on a frosty night in the Irish countryside. On the other hand, we saw a lot more than we would anywhere near our home.



The second excursion was a trip on a catamaran, officially to see whales and dolphins, though this took up only a small part of the time. The rest was a journey to Los Gigantes, some sea cliffs that are among the tallest in Europe. We didn't see any dolphins, but we saw a good number of pilot whales. The south-west of Tenerife is a more-or-less permanent home for many cetacean species, as the waters are warm and tranquil, with an abundant supply of food.





The final excursion, and definitely the highlight for me, was a trip on a submarine to see fish and stingrays under the ocean. This boat is one of only 15 commercial submarines in the entire world. It carries up to 44 passengers in air-conditioned comfort to the bottom of the Atlantic (which admittedly is only about 100 feet deep in that region). The boat is accompanied by a couple of scuba divers, who lead the wildlife past all the portholes (by trailing food) to make sure everyone gets a good look.

We returned to England feeling that we could've done with another week to see the place properly. Breda is already asking me when we can go back...

The Reluctant Dragonrider is on sale!

About a year later than I originally thought, The Reluctant Dragonrider is finally on sale. I planned it as another novella, like The Accidental Dragonrider, but it ended up being a full-length novel. I hope you'll think it's worth the wait...

Here's the blurb: It's been forty years since Tiwan's father convinced a dragon to save their village. Now the dragons are back, and they want Tiwan's help in a war against an enemy in their world's oceans. But she's just a child, so what could she do? The dragons threaten to invade the humans' world if they lose the war. Tiwan reluctantly agrees to go on a spying mission for them, even though she risks being lost in the dragons' world forever.

You can read the first chapter of The Reluctant Dragonrider in this post on my blog. You can buy it from Amazon US. Amazon UK, or your local Amazon site. The ebook is normally $2.99 or equivalent in your currency, but for a limited time, you can get it for just 99 cents. Or if you have an Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited subscription, you can read the ebook for free at any time. (I'm working on a print edition, which should be available in the next week or two.)

Happy reading!

October's writing progress

The Reluctant Dragonrider inches closer to publication. I'm still waiting for a few beta readers to come back to me. The ones who've responded so far haven't found any major problems, but better safe than sorry.

I wrote a fair chunk of my short story about the War of the Gods, but then put it aside to start recording an audiobook of Plague & Poison (volume 2 of The Barefoot Healer). I'm using all the lessons I learned when recording Death & Magic, so this is going much faster. I've spent a week and a half on it so far, and I'm about a third of the way through recording and editing. Getting that far into Death & Magic took me two months.

There are two main differences to my recording process this time. For the previous books, I did two takes of everything. This time I'm doing only one. If I notice a mistake while I'm recording, I'll do that bit again, but once I've got a recording that I think is good, I won't do another one. With the previous books, I found that the performances were usually so consistent between takes that there was little to choose between them, so I was wasting time recording the extra one, wasting time listening to both to decide which was better, and wasting time editing to cut out the take I didn't want. Of course, when I edit, I find a couple of mistakes in each chapter that I didn't notice during recording, but it's easy to make a note of them and re-record those bits at the start of the next recording session.

The second difference is that I'm editing each chapter as soon as possible after I record it. With the previous books, I recorded the whole book, then edited the whole book. Especially with Death & Magic, I put off the editing until I felt I had a long enough block of time to do it in one go, which meant a gap of more than a year between recording and editing. I don't know if editing as I go will actually make it faster, but it certainly feels faster, as the recording and editing are broken down into more manageable chunks. Who knows - Plague & Poison might even be on sale before Christmas!

Weel Done, Cutty Sark!

Cutty Sark is a 19th-century sailing ship, preserved as a museum in a dry dock in Greenwich in London. It's a clipper, a type of ship built for speed, specifically to carry tea from China to Britain. Tea was still something of a luxury in Britain at this time, and the first ship to make a delivery of the new season's crop could command a high price.

The exhibition tells the story of the tea trade in general and Cutty Sark in particular. When tea was first introduced to Britain, import duties on it were so high that it was a profitable cargo for smugglers. Aristocrats would keep their tea stash under lock and key, and prepare the drink themselves, rather than trust their servants to do it.

The name of the ship comes from the poem Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns. Tam is on his way home, drunk, late at night, and sees light coming from a ruined church. Witches and warlocks are dancing there, and the devil himself is playing the bagpipes. Tam notices one particularly attractive young witch wearing a sark (a shift or chemise) that's too cutty (short) for her. Unable to restrain himself, he calls out "Weel [well] done, cutty sark!" in admiration. The witches and warlocks, alerted to his presence, chase him. He makes his getaway over a bridge (the devil and his servants can't cross running water), but the young witch manages to seize the tail of his horse. The ship's figurehead is a likeness of the witch, holding the horse's tail. It's not entirely clear to me why the ship's owner chose the name. Certainly it suggests a fast vessel, but since the witch's quarry escaped, it also suggests one that's not quite fast enough.

For a trip from China to Britain, the ship's hull was essentially packed solid with tea crates, and carried about 580 tons of tea - enough to make about 200 million cups. The crew initially slept in a compartment at the bow, but complained this was too small, and so a couple of cabins were built on the deck. Even allowing for the fact that people tended to be smaller back then, these must have been cramped - eight or ten bunks in a space not much bigger than our spare bedroom.

Cutty Sark made "only" eight runs on the tea route. The ship's launch coincided with the opening of the Suez Canal. The canal shortened the route from Shanghai to London from about 16,000 miles to about 12,200, but it wasn't suitable for sailing ships. That, coupled with the improving efficiency of steam engines, meant that steamships became a much faster way of bringing tea to Britain. Clippers were broken up or moved to other routes where speed wasn't as important. Cutty Sark spent forty years or so sailing the world before returning to Britain in 1922 to be converted into a training ship. By the 1950s, it was no longer needed in this role. As it was the last surviving tea clipper, it was moved to a permanent dry dock on the River Thames and converted into a museum.

The exhibition tries to convey what life was like on board, though a lot of imagination is called for - you're spending a few minutes on a stationary platform in the middle of a big city, not weeks on a rolling ship hundreds of miles from land, constantly being chilled by the wind and drenched by the waves.

Unusually for a ship in a dry dock, you can walk around underneath the ship and admire its lines. The way this was done has been criticised as being ugly and more for the benefit of the corporate hospitality market than for the sake of preserving the ship. Personally I don't see what the problem is, though I know very little about architecture.

Allow an hour to go around, or maybe an hour and a half if you want to read all the text or have a go on the interactive exhibits.

September's writing progress

Much later than planned, here's what I did in September -

I finally picked a title for the book that I've been calling "the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider " for the last couple of years. It's now called The Reluctant Dragonrider. I held a little poll on Facebook for alternative titles, and the winner was the one I'd thought of first. One of these days, I'll learn to trust my instincts...

I completed the cover design for The Reluctant Dragonrider, and sent the book to my beta readers. I'm still waiting for some of them to come back, but those who've responded so far have been very positive.

The next novel in the pipeline is a sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir, but before I start that, I have a short story to finish. (Knowing me, it'll end up as a novella...) This one is about the War of the Gods, an important part of the backstory to The Barefoot Healer. It was going to be a bonus for the omnibus edition of the series, but I decided to save it for later. Then I've still got to figure out what to do with the children's book I've been teasing you about...

Preview of The Reluctant Dragonrider

This is the first chapter of my new novel, The Reluctant Dragonrider. As you'll know if you've been following my blog, it's a sequel to 2014's The Accidental Dragonrider. It's the story of Tiwan, the daughter of Iko, the protagonist of the earlier book.

Tiwan was seven when the dragon first came to visit.

She was in the garden of the monastery, playing hunters and quarries with her friend Revath. Tiwan stood against a wall, watching for Revath as he tried to sneak up on her without being seen. A door seemed to open in her mind, as if she’d remembered something she hadn’t realised she’d forgotten. Before she could wonder what this meant, she heard Papa calling her name.

A moment later, Revath popped up from behind a nearby bush. “You said you’d done all your chores.” He scowled, as though suspecting her of arranging this to avoid losing the game.

Papa called her name again, louder. She jogged towards the sound.

“There you are,” Papa said, coming round the corner of the monastery’s main building. He glanced at the clear sky overhead. “Tiwan, Revath, I, ah, I need you to go to the archives and, uh, lie down in the corridor between the Old Nuhysean and the Asdanundish sections. Be very quiet and don’t come out until I fetch you.”

“It’s too nice a day to be stuck indoors reading,” Tiwan replied, repeating something she’d heard Mama say a lot lately. “Can’t we play in the east courtyard instead? We won’t be any trouble, promise.”

Papa checked the sky again. Did he think it was going to rain? There wasn’t a cloud to be seen.

“Just go. Please. There isn’t much time.”

Tiwan stomped her foot. “This isn’t fair! We haven’t done anything wrong!”

“I know you haven’t, dear heart. Just do as you’re told.”

Revath tugged at her wrist, as if going to the archives had been his idea all along. She followed, dragging her feet, torn between wanting to please Papa and not wanting to let Revath think he could boss her around. She glanced over her shoulder to see Papa marching towards the main courtyard.

Inside the archives was pleasantly cool. Papa had told her this was good for the books. The shelves were mostly empty, though Tiwan had never understood why.

“What did you do?” Revath asked as he led her into the Old Nuhysean section.

“I didn’t do anything! That’s what’s so unfair!”

“Your Papa said be quiet.”

That gave her an idea. “What if we play hunters and quarries but don’t count aloud, and then—” Brightness struck her eyes, as if she’d stepped from a dark room into sunlight. She threw her arms around Revath to keep herself from falling.

“Hey!” Revath exclaimed.

A loud thump shook the room, felt more than heard. Shelves rattled, and showers of dust fell from the ceiling. A thick silence descended.

Eyes wide, Revath eased Tiwan’s arms off him and nodded towards the corridor that led to the Asdanundish section.

“It’s not safe,” Tiwan said. “Something’s fallen out of the sky onto the roof. That’s why Papa kept looking up. We should get out.”

He put a finger to her lips. “Your Papa knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t have said to come here if it wasn’t safe.” He started towards the corridor.

A deep rumbling came from outside, accompanied by a breeze that carried smells of burnt and rotting meat. Tiwan ran to the corridor and threw herself on the floor, whimpering. Moments later, Revath dropped to her side. He slid an arm around her.

“Hush, little one, everything’s going to be all right.”

“There’s a monster outside a huge monster it’s going to eat us up please Kashalbe forgive my sins please Mazor guard me I’ll be good I’ll do anything I swear it…”

Revath patted her shoulder. “Be quiet,” he whispered.

Iko. A voice, louder than she’d thought any voice could be, speaking Papa’s name, right behind her. She screamed and tried to stand, but Revath held her down.

She struggled against his grip. “The monster’s in here.”

He twisted to look behind them. “Nothing there.” He gave a nervous laugh.

“I heard it call Papa’s name.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Liar!”

“Don’t you dare call me that!”

She punched him—​not nearly as hard as he deserved, but hard enough to make him let go of her—​and jumped to her feet.

The Old Nuhysean section was empty.

“Come back here!” Revath said. “Your Papa will be angry with us!”

Are you Iko? Can you hear me?

The monster was behind her! She spun round, seeing nothing.

“It spoke again,” she whispered. It must be in the Asdanundish section. How had it moved without making a sound? She took a few hesitant paces in that direction, then stopped, aware that moving towards a monster that wanted to eat you was perhaps not the most sensible thing to do.

“Stop pretending you can hear a monster,” said Revath.

She turned, wanting to kick him. “I’m not pretending. It’s the loudest thing I ever heard. Louder than a thunderstorm. Louder than—​than the cobbler hawking his wares.”

“Tiwan, we can’t play games now,” said Revath. He stood, holding out a hand to her. “We have to do as your Papa says.”

“I’m not—​playing—​games.”

I have come. There was a long pause, and Tiwan turned through a full circle, still not seeing the monster. I have come because my kind require the assistance of a rider.

From a great distance came a sound that might have been someone laughing.

“We have to warn Papa,” Tiwan whispered.

“Warn him about what?”

“The monster’s come for him, but he’s out there and it’s in here. We’ll be safer with him.” She started for the Old Nuhysean section.

“There isn’t a monster, you goose. You come back here and lie down, or I’ll tell him it was you who broke that plate yesterday.”

A few minutes ago, such a threat would’ve had her rushing to obey, but she had far more important things to worry about now. “If you want to let the monster eat you and die with your sins unforgiven, that’s up to you. I’m going to find Papa.”

She crept through the Old Nuhysean section towards the exit. Remembering what she’d learned from playing hunters and quarries, she made use of the pillars and bookcases as cover. She expected at any moment to feel Revath’s hand, or worse, the monster’s claws, on her shoulder. But she reached the exit safely. She took a deep breath and slipped outside.

The smell of burnt and rotting meat was stronger here, and she almost gagged. She clapped a hand over her mouth and sprinted for the garden.

No sign of Papa. As she tried to think where he might have gone, she heard the monster’s voice again.

A race of beings exists in the ocean of our world.

It was still right behind her! How could it have followed without her hearing it? She grabbed a stick from a nearby flower bed and turned, swinging it like a sword.

Nothing there.

For most of remembered history, they have co-existed peacefully with my kind.

Again, the monster was behind her. Again, she spun round. Again, nothing there.

“Stop that, you bully,” she hissed. “This isn’t fair.”

A few years ago, as you reckon it, they began a series of unprovoked attacks on our homes and our people.

Tiwan lowered the stick. This monster didn’t sound like something that wanted to eat her. Apart from the fact it was always behind her, it didn’t seem to be interested in her at all.

“Papa!” she shouted.

She heard running footsteps, and Papa came hurtling round the corner, hand raised as though to smack her. “You naughty girl!” He skidded to a halt on the gravel. “I told you to stay in the archives.”

She dropped the stick. “We went to the archives, but we heard a loud bang and an invisible monster started following me. It smells bad.”

Papa frowned. “There’s no such thing as an invisible monster.” He pointed to the archives. “Just—​go. Please.”

“The monster keeps talking right behind me in a really loud voice and when I turn around it’s never there. I think it wants to talk to you. It said your name a couple of times and then it said a lot of things I didn’t understand. What does ‘unprovoked’ mean?”

Papa said a very bad word.

Tiwan clapped her hands over her ears. “Mazor guard me Kashalbe guide me Mazor guard me Kashalbe guide—”

Papa pulled one of her hands away. “I’m sorry, dear heart. Don’t pay any attention to the monster, no matter what it says. I promise you—​I’ll swear by any God you like, you and Revath and I are all perfectly safe, but this is something I need to do on my own. Now will you please—​for all our sakes—​go back to the archives and stay there until I come and find you. Will you be a good girl and do that for me?”

Mutely, she nodded, then traipsed towards the archives. After half a dozen steps, she looked behind her. Papa hadn’t moved. He stood with his arms folded, the way he did when he was about to lose his temper with her. She picked up her pace.

Inside the archives, she hid behind the end of the bookcase nearest the entrance and counted to twenty.

What was that about? the monster said.

Tiwan gasped. She crept round the back of the bookcase, so she couldn’t be seen from the entrance, then moved to the side of the entrance and peered out. Papa had left the garden.

“Little one, come back here.” Revath’s voice echoed from further in. She ignored him. “I’ll tell your Papa you ran out.”

“He already knows. Stay there.” Disobedience was a terrible sin, she knew, but curiosity burned in her. She stuck her head out of the entrance. Papa wasn’t there.

We require information that will allow us to defeat our enemy and secure our homes, the monster said.

Staying next to the wall, Tiwan padded towards the main courtyard, where she’d seen Papa come from. The smell grew stronger as she moved. Halfway there, she heard a slow rasping noise, like someone sawing down a tree.

The monster said, We would consider ourselves in your debt.

At the corner of the archive building, Tiwan pressed her body against the wall and edged her head past it.

In the main courtyard stood the monster. The smell was almost strong enough to knock her off her feet. The monster resembled the lizards that liked to sun themselves on the rocks by the wharves, but was huge—​almost too big to fit into the space. Its scales were dark red, the colour of a scab. Its mouth, full of sharp white teeth, was half-open, and a floppy tongue hung out of one side. She realised the sawing noise she’d heard was the monster’s breathing. It held one of its front feet slightly off the ground, as though it was injured.

That is one thing we cannot do. The monster spoke without moving its mouth. Or were there two monsters?

A much quieter voice came from the same place behind her as the monster’s. Then we have nothing further to say to one another.

That was Papa! Oh Mazor, he’d know she’d disobeyed him. She’d get such a paddling—

She spun round. Papa wasn’t there. A rustling from the courtyard made her turn back to the monster. It had spread a pair of enormous wings and was flexing them as though not quite sure how they worked. How could she have been so stupid? This wasn’t a monster, it was a dragon.

Papa stood before the dragon, arms folded, close enough for it to snatch him in its jaws if it wanted to eat him. He’d hardly be more than a snack to something that size.

I will return presently to see whether you have changed your mind, the dragon said.

I won’t, Papa replied. How was his voice coming from behind her when he was so far in front of her?

The dragon closed its mouth and crouched. The foot she’d decided was injured touched the ground and jerked up. Its eyes widened, and it hissed. Then it jumped straight up, higher than Papa’s head. She braced for it to crash onto the flagstones, but instead it beat its wings and rose into the air, buffeting her with a wave of grit and sand. It forced its way upwards like a man rowing a dinghy against the tide, seemingly climbing by sheer determination.

Papa watched the dragon as it began to spiral, the way gulls sometimes did when gaining height. From a distance it looked more graceful than it had on the ground.

Tiwan ran back to the archives before Papa could find out she’d been spying on him. Revath was still in the corridor where Papa had told them to wait, sitting against the wall, legs drawn up, arms around his shins. At the sound of her footsteps, he looked up and dragged a hand across his face.

“You are going to be in so much trouble,” he whispered as she sat next to him.

“Tiwan? Revath? You can come out now.” Papa’s voice came from the entrance. They stood up, and Tiwan ran to him. He lifted her off her feet in a tight hug, but didn’t growl like a bear the way he usually did. He groaned as he set her down. “I think you’re getting a bit too big for that, dear heart.”

She stared at the floor. Had he known she’d been watching?

“Revath, has your father gone fishing today?” Papa asked.

“No Sir.”

“Then run down to the village and ask him to come here.” After a moment, he added, “Tell him Athera came back.”

Thanks for reading this sample of The Reluctant Dragonrider. Watch this space for news of the book's release!

Bentley Priory Museum

Throughout its long history, Bentley Priory in north-west London has been a priory (!), a stately home, a royal residence, a hotel, a school, and most famously, an RAF base. During the Second World War, it was the headquarters of RAF Fighter Command. The British defence during the Battle of Britain was directed from here, and this is the main focus of the museum.

This is one of the more oddly-situated museums I've visited. Like most stately homes, the house was surrounded by acres and acres of grounds. When the RAF left, the grounds were mostly sold off for luxury housing, leaving the house as a museum. To reach the museum from the main road, you have to go through a gate with a security guard and pass lots of huge ugly modern houses and signs saying "Private Road - Residents Only."

One of the high points is an audio-visual presentation about Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who was the head of Fighter Command in the early part of the war. It uses his office as a screen for archive film and re-enactment about the Battle of Britain and events leading up to it. Before the war, many people believed that "the bomber will always get through" (a quotation from a speech by Stanley Baldwin that has been interpreted as favouring both disarmament and rearmament for Britain). By the time enemy bombers had been detected and fighter aircraft launched to intercept them, they would already have reached their target and dropped their bombs.

Dowding advocated for a system that filtered and collated information from radar stations all over the country to detect and intercept enemy bombers before they reached their targets. A centrepiece of the museum is a recreation of a filter room from this system. This room received reports from radar stations and figured out which aircraft these represented and where they were heading. The filter room fed this information to the operations room, which decided where to send the fighter squadrons. If the enemy changed course, the filter room would inform the operations room, who would redirect the fighters accordingly. An advantage was that fighter pilots could rest until an attack was imminent, instead of having to be in the air all the time. In hindsight, such a system seems obvious, but apparently it didn't occur to the Germans. They had radar to warn them of approaching bombers, but once the fighters took off, they were on their own.

It was mostly thanks to this integrated defence system that the RAF won the Battle of Britain. (Well, that and convincing the Luftwaffe to switching from bombing airfields to bombing cities, in retaliation for British attacks on German cities.) The Germans had more and better planes than the British, and their crews were more experienced, but they didn't work together as effectively as the British did.

The museum is quite small and still new (opened in 2013). Parts of it have a work-in-progress feeling to them. The exhibits tend to lean on text and photos to make their points more than artefacts (not that this is necessarily a bad thing for someone who likes reading as much as I do). It gave me new insight into a period of history I thought I already understood fairly well, so I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in the RAF, or the Second World War, or aerial combat in general.

Tickets are £8 for adults. Allow an hour to go around, or maybe a couple of hours if you want to read all the words. At the time of writing, it's only open four days a week, so check the museum website before setting off.