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As I Was Going to St Ives: A Life of Derek Jackson

The triumph of hope over experience

Simon Courtauld
Michael Russell, 192pp, £17.50,

Selina Hastings

Wednesday, 24th October 2007

Selina Hastings

Equally invaluable was his contribution to the development and use of ‘window’, the dropping of tinfoil strips to confuse enemy radar, again tested by Derek while flying and in conditions of extreme danger. For his work as a scientist-pilot he was awarded the DFC, the AFC and OBE.

Brilliant and brave, Derek was no less subversive in war than he had been in peace. Not all the pilots with whom he flew appreciated being given instructions — ‘Rechts! Links! Gerade aus!’ — in German, and he took delight in sending up his superiors. ‘A lot of people didn’t get the point of Derek,’ one fellow officer remarked; on the other hand, said another, ‘he made many a potentially boring evening in the mess hysterically funny.’ His most satisfying wartime tease was in 1943 when his brother-in-law, Sir Oswald Mosley, was released from prison because of ill health. Derek, indifferent to the fact that the Fascist leader was a national hate-figure and regarded as a dangerous security risk, invited Mosley and his wife, Diana, to stay at his house near Banbury. The story exploded across the front page of every newspaper in the country, and Derek was telephoned by a furious Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, demanding the Mosleys’ immediate removal. Icily Derek informed him that he regarded it as a gross impertinence that anyone should dictate whom he could or could not invite to his house, and the suggestion that guests of his might betray secrets to the enemy was outrageous. Shaken, Morrison climbed down and the Mosleys stayed.