SAGGITARIUS RISING

by Cecil Lewis, Cecil Levinson Lithographs (Illustrator)

A memoir by a WWI fighter pilot, with the adventurous spirit of War Horse and the charm of The Little Prince

A singular, lyrical book, Sagittarius Rising is at once an exuberant memoir from the Lost Generation and a riveting tale of the early days of flight during World War I. Cecil Lewis lied his way into the British Army’s Royal Flying Corps at age sixteen and was ordered to a squadron on the Western Front only a year later. At the time, flying was so new that designers hadn’t even decided on basic mechanics such as how many wings a plane should have. Despite this, Lewis mastered virtually every kind of single-engine plane in the RFC, going on to excel in active duty and even to dogfight the Red Baron—and live to tell the tale. Full of infectious charm and written with the prose and pacing of a novel, Sagittarius Rising beautifully recounts Lewis’s harrowing exploits in the sky alongside his wild times of partying and chasing girls while on leave in London. His coming-of-age story is unlike any other WWI memoir you’ve read before.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Aviation, World War I, Memoir, Military History, War

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Cecil Arthur Lewis MC was a British fighter pilot who flew in World War I. He went on to co-found the BBC and enjoy a long career as a writer, notably of the aviation classic Sagittarius Rising (inspiration for the movie Aces High).

Reviews

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't what I expected, but it was pretty darn good anyway. I had anticipated a World War I account. It was, sort of. In 1915, at the age of 17, Cecil Lewis applied to become a wartime airplane pilot. He had never been in a plane, but, like many young men of the day, was fascinated with the machine. He was deemed fit to train, and then sent to the front with only 13 hours seat time a month shy of his 18th birthday.

Flight was in it infancy - the Wright Brothers had flown their 200 yards at Kitty Hawk a mere 12 years earlier. Men were still learning and developing these wonders. Lewis became one of the more proficient pilots and describes the thrill of being alone above the clouds. He explained very well how the military began to learn the best ways of using this new tool - for photography (they had to change plates in the air!), for assisting gunners to home in on the enemy, bombing, home defense, and more.

Lewis also threw in a bit of philosophy in his memoirs. One example:

Nothing could live under that rain of splintering steel. A whole nation was behind it. The earth had been harnessed, the coal and ore mined, the flaming metal run; the workshops had shaped it with care and precision; our womenkind had made fuses, prepared deadly explosives; our engineers had designed machines to fire the product with a maximum of effect; and finally, here, all these vast credits of labour and capital were being blown to smithereens. It was the most effective way of destroying wealth that man had yet devised; but as a means of extermination (roughly one man for every hundred shells), it was primitive and inefficient.

Some of the book is a bit technical - I had to double check with my husband the difference between the ailerons and the elevator, for instance, and googling for images of some of the planes was essential (what does a Morane Parasol look like?). There is also some beautiful prose, though I could have wished for more. My one complaint is that for the most part Lewis seemed too distant from his experiences, except when he was sharing his feelings of being alone in a plane.

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction, by Samuel Hynes
Preface to the Second Edition, by Cecil Lewis

--Sagittarius Rising

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was extraordinarily hard to put down. Lewis' writing style was simple and interesting which left this reader wishing he knew Lewis who was more than a fighter pilot but a co founder of the BBC. He is seemingly open and at times says to the reader that the book was his best recollection. When I opened the book I was expecting a rehash of every combat flight but what was received was an insight to the time from one person's point of view. It was refreshing to read a book that embraces the entire experience not just one aspect. This book should be in the libraries of anyone who wants to understand the experience of WWI.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding memory of war from a boy who volunteered at 16, was accepted into the Royal Flying Corp at 17 and went to war soon after. From the age of 18 to 21, he survived in a battle arena where longevity was measured in weeks. His stories are split between training and battle. First person battle accounts are always high on my list to read. The men on the ground could only see a short distance, the wire entanglements, the shell holes, maybe the parapet of the opposing trench…but from on high, the young Cecil Lewis and his friends see the long view:
The war below us was a spectacle. We aided and abetted it, admiring the tenacity of men who fought in verminous filth to take the next trench thirty yards away. But such objectives could not thrill us, who, when we raised our eyes, could see objective after objective receding, fifty, sixty, seventy miles beyond. Indeed, the fearful thing about the war became its horrible futility, the mountainous waste of life and wealth to stake a mile or two of earth. There was so much beyond….

It was the most effective way of destroying wealth that man had yet devised; but as a means of extermination (roughly one man for every hundred shells), it was primitive and inefficient.

He flew in all the major battles. His account of the Somme battle is eye-opening where he flew artillery observation missions. In the modern military, we separate the flyers from the airspace where the artillery is using. Back then, it was the big sky, little bullet method…often not successful because there were so many “bullets”, i.e. shells:
At two thousand feet we were in the path of the gun trajectories, and as the shells passed, above or below us, the wind eddies made by their motion flung the machine up and down, as if in a gale. Each bump meant that a passing shell had missed the machine by four or five feet. The gunners had orders not to fire when a machine was passing their sights, but in the fury of the bombardment much was forgotten—or perhaps the fact that we were not hit proves the orders were carried out. If so, they ran it pretty fine.

The rapid advances in technology in the air during WWI often proved significant and tactics could not always compensate:
In 1917 co-operative tactics in single-seater fighting were rudimentary. A combat was a personal matter. In a fight no pilot has time to watch others; he is too occupied in attempting to down his own man or in avoiding an enemy intent on downing him. Tactics apart, the vital question is that of performance. A machine with better speed and climbing power must always have the advantage.

Life getting you down? Hop into an airplane and take a ride up high, things will be seen in a different light:
Flying alone! Nothing gives such a sense of mastery over mechanism, mastery indeed over space, time, and life itself, as this. Most men covet the power of putting the world, their world, into perspective, of seeing themselves in relation to it, of achieving some sort of harmony with their environment. It involves mastery, for that alone gives detachment, and only from detachment comes harmony—a sense of values. Never, it seems, has the world had so poor a sense of values as today. So, if the muddle-headed idiocy of men angers and intimidates you—for though fools running about with loaded revolvers may only make you angry, their potential power for damage cannot but be frightening—If the daily manifestations of an approaching cataclysm, which mutter and shake on the four horizons, make you despair, I recommend a trip to ten thousand feet to recover your sense of values—and your sense of humour.

I’ve been flying since I was 12. Wish I could capture the exhilaration a flight at dawn or sunset or over an undercast as well as he does:
But here! As far as the eye could reach, to the four horizons, a level plain of radiant whiteness, sparkling in the sun. The light seemed not to come from a single source, but to pervade and permeate every atom of air—a dazzling, perfect, empty basin of blue. A hundred miles, north, south, east, west. Thirty thousand square miles of unbroken cloud-plains! No traveller in the desert, no pioneer to the poles had ever seen such an expanse of sand or snow. Only the lonely threshers of the sky, hidden from the earth, had gazed on it. Only we who went up into the high places under the shadow of wings!

It grew rapidly. Soon it was vast, towering, magnificent, its edges sharp, seemingly solid, though constantly swelling and changing. And it was alive with light. Radiant white, satin soft, and again gold, rose-tinted, shadowed and graded into blue and mauve shadows—an orient pearl in the oyster shell of heaven! And all the time I knew that I had but to come close enough for all the illusion to be gone, the solidity and beauty to dissolve, the edges to fray and dull, and that within it would be the same grey mist that you may meet on any moor in England.

His view of how to prevent the next world war is idealistic but ultimately unrealistic:
If we cannot collectively rise above our narrow nationalism, the vast credits of wealth, wisdom and art produced by Western civilization will be wiped out. If we really want peace and security, we must pool our resources, disarm, and set up an international air police force, federally controlled. That force must be as incorruptible, free from bias and self-interest, and devoted to law and order as our civil police are today. There is no other way.

The idea that there are no atheists in foxholes did not apply to him. He was at least agnostic to the end:

If, in heaven, my grosser qualities were to be purged away, leaving me all “good,” so much the worse. The devil was the pepper in my curry; remove it, and how flat the dish would taste.

5 Stars for a classic story of war and flying.

[William Battersby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book.

This book captures many things. Ostensibly it is just the autobiography of the author from his schooldays until his mid twenties. But that period of his life coincided with the First World War, in which the author served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. It describes his thoughts and feelings, engaged in daily life-or-deeth fights up to four miles in the sky in aircraft which today would be condemned as deathtraps.

Yet this is much, much more than a 'war story'. Lewis realised that he lived in, and survived, an extraordinary time and decsribes well his wonder and horror at war in the air only fifteen years after the Wright brothers had made their first flight. His sensitive nature enabled him to capture not just the action but also the emotional impact of it all. Although he lived to be over 100 and had a remarkable life, he knew that from the 11th November, 1918, nothing would ever match the intensity of these times.

There is truly something for everyone here. While the pilot will empathise with Lewis's wonderful descriptions of landscapes and cloud-scapes, the military historial will value the originality of his story and the general reader the wondering sense of romance in his carefully crafted, albeit dated, narrative.

A book which deserved to live for ever.

[archive ☄ · Rating 5 out of 5]

that we are doomed to live in this feverish age, rushing hither and thither, crying lo, here! or lo, there! like madmen in a darkened room, is our misfortune; but momentarily withdrawn from it all, sailing godlike above its clamour, comes a curious certainty: it does not matter, it will not last; the world is very foolish, but it is very young.

um,,, yea. we're on 24 hour enamored of cecil lewis lockdown,,, i love him. this is one of the strangest, funniest, wittiest, saddest, absurdest, most delightful accounts of the war i've yet encountered, and it reads like a breeze. blunden is absolutely trembling. in fact, most of this book reads as though it were in fact written by blunden – the exclamation points! the pages on pages of poetic digression! – if edmund had joined up in the flying corps instead of the infantry. needless to say, coming from me, the blunden adorer par excellence, this really is something of a comparison. i read it over the course of three mornings in the history department common room, did in fact get quite a few disturbed glances whilst i giggled over whatever mishap cecil had lately gotten himself into. he feels like a friend now. i do wish he were still here!

anyway, i got this copy from the library and i'm already staying my hand to keep me from stealing it. some books simply have that effect on you and those are the very, very best kind, imo <3

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvellous story. The author was at high school in England at the start of WW1. He had a strong desire to participate in the war and discovered that the Flying Corps would allow him to enrol at the age of 17 (a year younger than the army). He succeeded with his quest and was an outstanding pilot based mainly in France near the the Somme area which was the Western Front where millions of men died in atrocious conditions. He recounts his life from the time of joining the Flying Corps onwards and then through to the post-war period when he ended up in China endeavouring to train Chinese pilots to fly passenger aircraft.
His descriptions of flying in that early period of air combat, his observations of trench warfare from above, the loss of fellow pilots to both accidents and mortal combat are all vivid and engrossing. Thoroughly enjoyable, informative and well constructed from start to finish.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lewis’ memoir of his time as a pilot in the Great War is filled with gorgeous prose and sublime descriptions bordering on the philosophical. It’s easy to see why Shaw admired his writing. Lewis is equally adept at describing exciting battles, the everyday routine of the soldier (which was admittedly much different for pilots than for ground forces), and personal interactions away from the war. The language emerges from the past like that of a lost civilization (or generation?) as Lewis describes flying his “machine” to the “aerodrome.” To think that only fifty years later, humans would walk on the moon.

It’s hard to believe Lewis was sent to the front after only a handful of hours training on highly experimental aircraft at the tender age of 17. At a time when there were no parachutes and night flying had not yet become common (no lights for the instrument panel, much less for the runways!), he seems to have survived against all odds and lived several lifetimes by the time he was 20. The book reads like the memoir of a knight on the very cusp of modernity who is one of the first to venture out into new lands that previous humans have only dreamt about.

Unfortunately, the last sixty pages are anticlimactic and out-of-place, as Lewis describes his post-WWI travel to China. Although he is there to teach the Chinese to fly, he gives us almost no descriptions of training. Rather, the book becomes a meditation on East vs. West, the advance of technology on a culture defined by slow-paced tradition, and some discussion of imperialism, of which he is a reluctant part. This last section seems like a different book, and one wishes an editor would have asked him to remove it to save for another memoir on his post-war experiences. Lewis includes it only because it chronicles the last few times he flew before giving it all up (at least until the next war…)

In any case, this is still essential reading for anyone interested in WWI or early flight, as Lewis’ prose stands alongside some of the best writers of his age who experienced the war, which is quite a compliment, considering the names on that list.

[Graham Mott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps the best known RFC memoir from the Great War. Lewis was a skilled and lucky pilot and his book brings home the thrill of the early days of flight. However, it is very much in the romantic “Knights of the Air” school and glosses over the brutality of ruthless fights to the death, at very close range, which was the nature of the air war. The book, which has been reprinted many times, was written in the 1930s and as he didn’t keep a diary, is rather a series of vignettes rather than a detailed account of his war. It also includes his post- war adventures in China which are of less interest. However it remains a classic book and it is always worth remembering it is the recollection of someone who was still just 20 at the war’s end.

[Don Alesi · Rating 3 out of 5]

If a person could give a rating on only the first two thirds of a book then Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis would get four stars. The book is a memoir of Cecil Lewis's time as a pilot in WW1. It gave me a very interesting insight to what young person goes through from the first time he tells his parents that he wishes to fight the war as pilot to his last patrol on the last day of the war. I wish the book had ended there.

The problem was that after the war he ended up in China teaching flying. The book got bogged down with tedious information that unless you are really into that part of the word during the early twenties, became excruciatingly boring.

It's worth a read if you are totally immersed in WW1 aviation but you are not missing anything by skipping the last third of the book.

[Jacob Wise · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly compelling and spectacular chronicle of early aviation during the Great War. Lewis’s account offers a thrilling weave of memories - often shrouded in the optimism of youth yet ever fascinating and admirable. His palpable descriptions of the adrenaline fuelled chaos of dogfights are nicely balanced by moments of more existential reflection. Climbing 20,000 ft above the battlefield, completely alone and at one, gazing down like a god upon the seemingly meaningless acts of wretched brutality being enacted below...

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful memoir of life in the Royal Flying Corps during WW1. Reminiscent of St Euxpery, there are some wonderful lines and images in the book.

[Len Knighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A near masterpiece

Cecil Lewis is certainly one of the most eloquent authors it has been my pleasure to read. His prose is beautifully poetic; his descriptive language paints vivid pictures of still life and action. He might say that war inspires art more than peace but his post-World War One writing, while perhaps not as exciting as his wartime narratives, is equally profound and brilliant.
I don’t know how many passages I highlighted. Some are set aside for the wisdom they impart; others so that those who may consider this book on Goodreads may marvel at how beautiful the English language can sound. It compares favorably, for me, with two conversations by actors Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov in the movie SPARTACUS.
I read in Leonard Wolf’s THE ANNOTATED DRACULA that a masterpiece is not without flaws. (This might be a Chinese proverb.) There is a flaw in this one, not in the writing but in the writer, one which he exposes. In the final chapter, Lewis wrote a very racist paragraph directed at the Chinese and black people. I did not highlight it; I saw no reason to perpetuate his ideas.
That being said, I am not about to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Five stars.

[Mark Speed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first came across this book when talking with a couple of WWI veterans (in their nineties, back in 1980). One of them was listening to the serialisation on Radio 4. Both were infantrymen in the First World War and had always thought the airmen had it easy. The one who had listened to the serialisation realised that their lives were in some ways worse.

This book is the extraordinary story of a boy (he was 17) who learnt to fly and was in combat over France in 1915 until the end of the war. Under contract from Vickers, he went on to teach the Chinese how to fly.

It's particularly poignant for me, as I had long conversations with those two WWI veterans (no combatants from that war are now alive), and one of my great uncles was in the RFC and then in the RAF. I never met him, but my parents have mementos - two old Sopwith Camel propellers made into a clock and a hatstand.

[Sean Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rambling poetic memoir, more a collection of memories and thoughts. Its greatest point is a lack of arrogance; Lewis knows his memory is faulty. Only trouble is some of the remembrances and anecdotes are downright boring. Probably the best description of flying I have ever read, a breath of fresh air in our age where flight is treated as commonplace, mechanical, and sometimes even dreary.

[Charlie Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great true story. A seventeen year old joins the British Air Force during World War One. Planes have never been used in combat before and are still being developed. In a time when the average life expectancy of a combat pilot is only three weeks, the author survives the whole war. A true adventure!

[Franziska Self Fisken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This man was clearly a brave, unusual, intelligent, charismatic, and an extremely good looking man who was not the faithful type but also not proud of that. He is also a fantastic writer.

His descriptions of flying in WW1, of Peking in the early 1920s are utterly superb. He only hints at his love life, but how utterly poetically! He barely mentions his mother, but somehow touches the core of her love for him. His prose is at times splendidly poetic and at others brilliantly lucid and concise.

Poignant parting of mother from her son embarking on his career as WW1 pilot. Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising
'My mother came down to say good-bye. She behaved as all good mothers should, gave me a cigarette-case, talked of every thing except the Front, adjured me to write regularly, said she was not going to worry as I was quite certain to come through all right, and said good-bye at the station without breaking down. Seventeen is not a grateful age. So much is taken for granted. The parent's care and solicitude become a burden to be cast off. So I record with some remorse how little that parting meant. I was full of the new life, and utterly failed to grasp the blank my going would leave, the daily searching through the long casualty lists, the daily listening for the knock which might mean a word, a line, some message, however meagre, from "somewhere in France". I was rather relieved to have her gone, for I dreaded a scene. I was as certain as she that I should come through all right, and that being so, why get emotional over a temporary separation? But, all the same, the truth was that the average length of a pilot's life at that time was three weeks. I was hopelessly inequipped and inexperienced. Later, no pilot was allowed to cross the lines before he had done sixty hours' flying - I had done thirteen. There was every excuse for a last fare well; but, mercifully, we did not know it. It is only now I can look back, judge of the hazards, and get a vague idea of the miracle that passed me through those years unscathed. She had made me have my photograph taken, too, and I hated it! The only one I cared about showed the "Wings" prominently; but, of course, she liked another, in profile, where they did not show at all - liked the expression, she said. Sentimental, mothers were; but she was proud too. I was not to know that photo was to stand on her desk if "anything happened," for her to say, "This was my son!" and try to find something to justify a belief in the worthiness of my death when, in her heart, she knew that the world could never be richer or nobler for butchering a million of its sons.

She was gone, leaving me for my last evening to the care of Eleanor. It was to be a champagne dinner, her new frock, a box at the theatre, and, after, I was to take her home. She was the loveliest girl in the neighbourhood, very much sought after, with a full engagement book, a large heart, and a big sofa before the fire. Smile at this innocent parting if you please. I confess to a sigh of regret, not at a lost opportunity, but at something inevitably lost, something which, to me, seems precious - the idealism, the directness, the simplicity of youth.'

Towards the end of the book, just as World War 1 ends, Cecil Lewis writes:- 'the end of the war left me with no feeling of flatness; indeed, the change was a stimulus. Other men might shake their heads, having pre-war days to remember. I was not going back to things previously known. Everything was shining new. Besides, although the war was over, the attitude to life it had provoked continued. It was a sort of hang-over. Everyday existence was like those snatched weeks of leave from the front; incredibly hectic, gay, and careless. No doubt the general feeling of immense relief was bound to vent itself thus in an orgy of exuberance and irresponsibility. An era of false prosperity set in. Nobody stopped to examine the real situation. A million men had been killed; billions of pounds had been blown away. The waste had been terrific. The world must be poorer; but nobody would face it. Had we pulled in our belts and disciplined ourselves for four years to proceed with caution and circumspection now, when we were victors? At Versailles, those few who prophesied disaster were never heard. Who could hear such a whisper in the tumult? Hang the Kaiser! Make Germany pay! Take away her colonies, split up her empire! Rearrange Europe and give each of the victors a share of the spoils! These were so many strokes of the pen. And if some economist advised moderation, pointed out the absurdity of making a state bankrupt with one hand and demanding it should pay in full with the other, he was swept aside. The public wouldn't stand it, was the answer. And that, indeed, was true. It is easy to be wise after the event and condemn those who drew up that Treaty, but, at the time, it is difficult to see what else they could have done. The world had no experience of treaties on such a scale to go on, so its statesmen did the obvious and popular thing. It was too much to expect jaded and middle-aged politicians to realize that the whole economic structure of the world had changed overnight.

If believing in good times could bring them, the post-war years should have been the most prosperous the world had ever known. The spirit of those days was, in fact, as I remember it, immensely liberal. Everything was to be rebuilt on a bigger and better scale. Of course, it might not pay at once; but, later, things would improve. It was not until ten years after, when the looked-for prosperity had not materialized and this delusion had almost wrecked the world, that we suddenly pulled up all standing and found ourselves bankrupt. To-day, whether there is a way out is still in question. Probably the next, now rapidly preparing, cataclysm may provide an emotional solution to a problem insoluble intellectually.'

This book was published in 1936, and clearly Cecil Lewis was aware that WW2 was to happen.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me personally. It's widely regarded as a classic of World War 1 aviation literature and I can see why others would view it as such. Its the story of a young English man who joins the Royal Flying Corps, becomes a pilot and flies in the air war over France and later England. He fortunately survives the war and the book concludes in China where he works as a flight instructor training new Chinese pilots.

What I really liked was some of the authors descriptions of little moments here and there that really put you in the time and place. He has a poetic touch and going on a first date with a girl as an example, he touches on and recalls the emotions and feelings we all have in a way most other authors cannot convey.

On the other hand the book has a disjointed quality to the narrative and it gets bogged down at times in philosophical discussions. So at some points the narrative has a random dreamlike quality to it and then at other times it feels like a sermon. Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a master at this type of writing but with this author I imagine he was aiming for a similar goal but it didn't really come together as successfully.

I think it flags towards the end also but overall its an interesting enough story of a boy growing to maturity during the war and perhaps in a general way the loss of youthful innocence.

[Jack Abbott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The aeroplane was only twelve years old when Cecil Lewis joined the Royal Flying Corps. Over 200 pages we follow its rapid development as he serves in the First World War and beyond. Though “the average length of a pilot’s life ... was three weeks” the autobiography ends six years later in China.

To anyone who has read the memoirs of those who served in the trenches, or as Lewis refers to them “PBI” (Poor Bloody Infantry), his account forms an interesting contrast. Life seems more civilised, the accommodation certainly more welcoming. The fighting at times though was just as brutal. Airmen burn to death as their craft plummet towards the ground (the parachute had yet to become standard issue).

There are incredibly sombre moments. In one memorable passage, Lewis returns from leave to find that almost all of his friends have recently been killed. Drinking alone in the mess, he is surrounded by “five ghosts in the room”. All lives brutally stamped out at such a young age.

A few minor criticisms are that the book tended to drag post-1918. Some of the comments towards the Chinese are stereotypical of the period, and appear dated. A word of warning too. Be prepared to resort to Google Images with some of the more obscure aircraft types.

However, this was my second time reading the book and it was as interesting as the first. I highly recommend it.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exuberant, youthful book that recalls a different time and place, almost a different world to the one we inhabit now. Cecil Lewis was a WW1 fighter pilot and this is his personal recollections of what it was to be young, confident and undoubtedly courageous in the skies above France, fighting for air supremacy while the armies struggled in the trenches and mud below. It's a dashing tale and you can't help but feel that Lewis was having the time of his life, fearless and fretless, as he headed up into the blue yonder to take on the Hun. He sees himself as a noble knight, fighting the good fight, saluting the enemy for their guts and skill in this early form of combat. He loses a lot of friends, but sees this as part of the package, they all knew what they were signing up for. In between his combat missions, he draws a picture of life during wartime in England, innocent trysts with young girls, raucous parties with fellow pilots, speeding down English country lanes with the world still a playground to be enjoyed to the full. And if it all ended tomorrow, they had a damned good time.
Once the war is over, the book loses a bit of verve and steam but none of its charm. Lewis continues on with adventures abroad in China and elsewhere and, if I'm honest, I kind of lost a bit of interest at this point. I do like books about flying and this is one I feel I can recommend.

[NDH · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is as fine a book about the early years of flying as I can imagine. I’m quite intrigued by Cecil Lewis and may come back to him for more as he seems to have been quite productive.
What interests me perhaps most about Lewis and this book (written nearly 20 years after WW1) is that Lewis is clearly NOT one of the “Lost Generation.” By this I mean that his war experiences are not conscripted as a vehicle for phony self-promotion based on feigned sensitivity, manufactured disillusionment, virtue signaling and moral superiority. He never whined. Indeed, his celebration of life brings to mind nothing so much as Wordsworth’s “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.” In any case, Lewis seems to have led a long, productive and useful life (one of the founders of the BBC) with no thought of swallowing his shotgun in “despair.”
Not that Lewis was a traditionally religious man. His articulate and surprisingly lengthy exposition of a personal spirituality is easy to appreciate, even though much of it is nonsense. His later adoption of some of Gurdjieff’s raving lunacy is, well, unfortunate. But he seems to have approached life without the self pity (and the eye of a publicist) of the “Lost Generation”.

Which, of course, leaves me wondering how the self-absorbed Lost Generation gave rise to the self-sacrificing Greatest Generation (only to be followed by the Baby Boomers…beurk…)

I found Cecil Lewis quite refreshing.

[Charles Sheard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was initially hesitating to give this book five stars, given how light and breezy the writing. And near the end, the extended discussion of his time in China almost made me drop a star. As enjoyable as it was, it simply seems out of place and anti-climactic to the first 3/4 of the book. But then in the final pages, with a poignancy and a melancholy that supremely evokes all of the simple, daily joys that the years of flying meant to him, you are reminded how wonderful a memoir this has been throughout. It is, in fact, the light-hearted and breezy writing that makes this unique, where most stories of the war attempt to wring as much emotional impact as possible from the horrors and devastation. Lewis, on the other hand, is able to press his points just as significantly, with brief, often cursory passages that say enough to impact the reader without being maudlin, without beating the horse to death. And of course, for any flying buff (or WWI buff for that matter), this is naturally a must-read. It is books like these that truly make you wish you were alive and young at the time. Will any book written about today trigger such emotions 100 years from now?

[Robert Hepple · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 1936, 'Sagittarius Rising' is an autobiographical account of an RFC/RAF pilot during WW1. The longest chapter, taking just under half of the book, covers events around the Somme offensive from July 1916, although many other areas are also covered. I found the short chapter on his training really interesting. The book ends with a couple of short chapters covering his post-WW1 aviation experience, concentrating on his job with Vickers where he not only test flew the Vickers Vimy converted for Alcock and Brown's Atlantic crossing, and his part in a Vickers contract to supply Vickers types to China and train Chinese flyers in their use. After the mx of euphoria and poignancy of the wartime accounts, it did seem to lose steam with the post-war accounts. Nevertheless, I have found this to be one of the most quoted books in accounts of WW1 RFC operations, so it had to be read and it did not disappoint.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always find it hard to objectively rate autobiographical war books; I just can't help feeling that people who took the bridge at Arnhem deserve better than for some guy sitting on his sofa 70 years later to say "it isn't really that readable, doesn't really flow". That said, "Sagittarius Rising" shines during the writer's description of air combat during World War I, both at the front and as well as training and home defense in the UK. Elsewhere the book meanders somewhat, especially after the war when the writer is sent to work as a pilot instructor in China. Despite this, the book is still a solid read, particularly for anyone interested in military history.

[Ian Rees · Rating 4 out of 5]

The description of what it meant to be a pilot in the First World War is riveting. The detail of each of the planes, what it involved in dealing with them and their technicalities, what he saw from the air, what it meant to fly through a barrage and act as an artillery spotter (ie risk being shot down by his own guns) is all eye-opening. Lewis has a poetic style and occasionally goes into flights of philosophical speculation which I did not find so interesting, but perhaps that is inevitable because Lewis lead a charmed life, surviving more than three years in the air when at one stage the average was just three weeks. Recommended for anyone wanting details of the war in the air

[Mr S Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, with "almost " forgotten phrases and poetic terminology from days gone by. In many cases, despite being written half a century ago about memories over a century ago the life lessons felt just as relevant today as when it was written, “ My most pregnant memory of the war. It was, in fact, the symbol of our enlightened twentieth century: science, in the pursuit of knowledge, being exploited by a world without standards or scruples, spiritually bankrupt.. “…. beautiful, valid and honest .. My only complaint, albeit minor is the last third of the book about the days after the war felt a little tame as a resolution for the novel.

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cecil Lewis’s experiences in this highly descriptive 1936 work describe his flying exploits and experiences in vivid detail. Joining the Royal Flying Corps at the age of 17 and then heading to France, readers get a feel for the trial and error and humor abounding in the golden era of aviation. Brown illustrates for us the horrors of war, particularly his part during the Battle of the Somme, surviving the ‘Jerrys’ intent on taking him out of the sky. We watch as he defends London, then witness hi post-war flying career teaching the Chinese and his rich cultural experiences in Peking and Shanghai! This is an aviator’s aviation story told well and humorously!

[John Garlington · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book

This book was recommended to me as something more than a war book and would be a real experience. It certainly lived up to its recommendation.

Lewis discusses his experiences in an appealing and undemonstrative way, using vivid description of situation and feelings. At times he discusses combat and the effects of war on the human psyche and spirit, which gave me an extra insight on top of what I already knew about the War.

Because of his description of experiences and their effects I understood more about my grandfather who was wounded at Passchendaele.

Lewis was a fighter ace with eight “kills”, but little is said about this.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written memoir of an English scout pilot in WWI. It was not exactly what I was expecting. I thought it would be full of dog-fights and daring, excitement lack of a better word, instead you get an account of the first real days of flight. The author is introspective and seems to have a very quiet mind, It all read as a rather distant memory and I never felt like the author was in the here and now, It was almost like a book of reminiscing.

A very good well written memoir that if your interested in WWI aircraft and warfare you should definitely take a look.

[Matthew Pritchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic memoir that covers the experiences of a young pilot in WWI (Lewis was only 17 when he started flying).

The book contains a bit of everything: technical details about the different planes he flew; poignant portraits of fallen comrades; his memories of aerial combat; and landmark moments in his own young life, such as losing his virginity.

His prose style is sometimes a little florid, but is bang on the money for most of the important parts, creating a book that is both exciting and emotionally engaging.