Fight of the Few

by Richard Hough

This is the story of the battle that inspired Sir Winston Churchill's moving tribute, "Never was so much owed by so many to so few," a story that takes you back into that time when the skies first became war's deadliest battleground . . . when outnumbered, out-gunned Spitfires and aging Hurricnes dueled in fever-pitched one-to-one combat with the lethal Messerschmitt 109s of the mighty Luftwaffe. This is the story of bold, reckless men hungry for glory . . . men who left the women they loved and took to the skies, for Britain and for freedom. This is the story of men determined to seize victory and prepared to die in The Fight of the Few.

Genres: Historical Fiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 1980

About the author

Richard Alexander Hough was a British author and historian specializing in naval history. As a child, he was obsessed with making model warships and collecting information about navies around the world. In 1941, he joined the Royal Air Force and trained at a flying school near Los Angeles. He flew Hurricanes and Typhoons and was wounded in action.

After World War II, Hough worked as a part-time delivery driver for a wine shop, while looking for employment involving books. He finally joined the publishing house Bodley Head, and then Hamish Hamilton, where he eventually headed the children’s book division.

His work as a publisher inspired him to turn to writing himself in 1950, and he went on to write more than ninety books over a long and successful career. Best-known for his works of naval history and his biographies, he also wrote war novels and books for children (under the pseudonym Bruce Carter), all of which sold in huge numbers around the world. His works include The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45, Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century and best-selling biographies of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Captain James Cook. Captain Bligh and Mr Christian, his 1972 account of the mutiny on the Bounty, was the basis of the 1984 film The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.

Hough was the official historian of the Mountbatten family and a longtime student of Churchill. Winston Churchill figures prominently in nine of his books, including Former Naval Person: Churchill and the Wars at Sea. He won the Daily Express Best Book of the Sea Award in 1972.