The Aerodrome

by Rex Warner

First published in 1941, The Aerodrome is one of the few works of fiction in the twentieth century to understand the dangerous yet glamorous appeal of fascism and the less than satisfactory answer of traditional democracy--and to transmute their deadly opposition into terms of enduring art. Mr. Warner brilliantly invents, on one side, a thoroughly degenerate Village representing fallen man, and on the other side a great Aerodrome dedicated to ruthless efficiency. The ideological struggle between the idealistic Air Vice-Marshal and the hero-narrator from the Village is portrayed with poetry, narrative speed, and great simplicity of language. It is a great symbolic novel of our time.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, British Literature, Novels, 20th Century, Classics

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Rex Warner was an English classicist, writer and translator. He is now probably best remembered for The Aerodrome (1941), an allegorical novel whose young hero is faced with the disintegration of his certainties about his loved ones and with a choice between the earthy, animalistic life of his home village and the pure, efficient, emotionally detached life of an airman.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Remember that we expect from you conduct of a quite different order from that of the mass of mankind. Your purpose - to escape the bondage of time, to obtain mastery over yourselves, and thus over your environment - must never waver... This discipline has one aim, the acquisition of power, and by power freedom.”

The Vice-Marshall of The Aerodrome was quite the pontificating bastard. He was always ready with a few words of disdain for the way things have been done, and always willing to share his opinions about how things should be done. He despises tradition because it keeps people from mindlessly following his version of the NEW ORDER.

You see, this is a fable about Fascism.

We first meet Roy at the conclusion of his 21st birthday. The book opens with him lying in the weeds and reeds with his face sinking into the mud. He’s had a bit too much to drink. He’ll soon wish he’d had more to drink. During a bit of timely eavesdropping, he discovers that his father and mother are not his parents, and with an added slice of cherry on top that, his father, the rector, is actually a murderer.

A lot to take in drunk or sober.

He spends most of the rest of the book trying to determine who his parents are. When he discovers someone who does know something about his parentage, they become cryptic and evasive with usually a dash of...well...lying.

Roy has a girlfriend named Bess who is the best looking lass in the village. The airmen of the aerodrome flock around her as well. They, not surprisingly, are only interested in the more lustful aspects of being with a girl. The Vice-Marshall has made it very clear that thoughts of more permanent arrangements, such as marriage, are just a form of lunacy. The Flight-Lieutenant becomes Roy’s arch rival for Bess’s affections, though for now Roy still has the inside track.

”We began fumbling with our clothes, reaching in an inexpert way for the satisfaction with which neither of us was perfectly acquainted. There were difficulties and dangers of which we had heard, expostulations and timidity. And there was something loose and scrambling in our love-making, nor was anything conspicuously beautiful or satisfactory achieved. Yet something had been done….”

Roy is in love, well as much as anyone can be in love in their early twenties. It is all rather a rush of emotions and desires to sort out. Yearning involves a whole concoction of a natural need we have for pairing, mind swirling lusts, and usually the beginnings of true feelings.

While Roy is rolling around in the hay with Bess, the Flight-Lieutenant shoots The Rector while giving a machine gun demonstration. ”I say, Roy, something rather rotten has happened. I’m afraid I’ve potted your old man.” The interesting thing about this event is that Roy is still struggling with his own feelings about a man he feels has lied to him his whole life. He feels remorse that he is dead, but also a slender thread of relief. The people of the village seem to lack the proper emotion for this tragedy. There is already a level of resignation weighing heavily on everyone about how the future will play out. The Vice-Marshall waves the whole event off as just an unfortunate accident.

But was it?

The Aerodrome in true Fascist form takes over the village. This is much easier since the death of the Rector left the village leaderless. The Flight-Lieutenant is put in charge of the sermons at the church, which of course is just a way to continue to indoctrinate the village into the philosophies of the Vice-Marshall. Bess convinces Roy to become an airman, and he actually discovers he is very good at flying. Roy begins to see the benefits of just accepting the ideology and the success that will be his. It is hard not to think about all the good men in Germany who didn’t believe in what the Nazis were doing, but were benefiting from complying, and maybe more importantly keeping their families safe. I’ll trot out a quote by Edmund Burke. ”The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Roy will unknowingly become embroiled in a love triangle, one of those things that can leave a person gut punched, unhinged, and bitter. He has his own affairs, but we know that in his core what Roy wants is a wife, a family, a life beyond shallow liaisons.

The who sired who question becomes comical as more than just Roy become uncertain as to who actually spawned them. There is subtle humor throughout the book as Rex Warner exposes how ridiculous the propaganda can become as leaders try to convince a passive citizenry of the way forward.

I first heard about The Aerodrome when James Blish alluded to it in the intro he wrote for the fantastic book by Anna Kavan titled Ice. Warner was well respected by his writing colleagues. He went on to write three other anti-fascist novels during the war. He had a high suspicion of government or any entity being able to solve all of our problems. His most successful book was a translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, which sold over a million copies. It is hard to imagine a book like that selling that many copies in today’s market. He married three times, twice to the same woman. He decided after a brief foray with another woman that his choice the first time was the right one.

This novel is nearly forgotten today, but still resonates with the fear and absurdity of a world gone mad, and the complacency of the people allowing it to happen.

I was very fortunate to find an affordable first American edition of this book at Bill’s Books in Frederick, Maryland.

To see all of my recent book reviews and movie reviews please visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com

[E. G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduction, by Michael Moorcock
Author's Note

--The Aerodrome: A Love Story

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Up until the last 50 pages or so, I was prepared to give The Aerodrome 5 stars. And then the wheels (or wings) came off. What had been a fascinating allegorical novel of ideas, politics (fascism), and religion, written during a very troubled time (1939), devolved into a soap opera like ending. As I was reading the novel, I was preparing myself to write at greater length, but now that I feel so cheated by the experience, why bother? Still, The Aerodrome is worth reading for a number of reasons. Warner has a deceptively simple way of writing that suggests much beneath the surface, so if you're into style, it's worth a look. Also, this book evidently was a major influence on J.G. Ballard. I've read enough of Ballard to see why (style & approach). For historical reasons alone this book has a place beside Brave New World and 1984; and on a literary level, for a while at least, The Aerodrome may have been the better novel. In The Aerodrome Warner (a classicist and son of a clergyman) signaled that he was playing for high stakes (I loved the George Herbert poem that opened the book, the early echoes of Milton’s Paradise Lost), and then couldn't close the deal. Pfffft!

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Aerodome was published in 1941, written by a British novelist best known in the United States for his English translations of classical Greek literature. Subtitled “a love story,” it describes two conflicting world views, the sloppy, traditional English neo-feudal village country life, with its age-old occupations and cultural events (pub, church, agricultural fairs) with a nascent fascist alternative represented by the life at the growing air force base, staffed with airmen trained to be emotion-free pragmatists, free of any corrupting loyalty (such as family, religion, romance).

Like Orwell and Huxley, Warner is tackling the dystopian reality beneath utopian ideologies and despite a less than nostalgic take on the alternative (the local rector confesses to murdering his best friend to clear his way to marry the friend’s fiancee, drinking and violence are issues, hypocrisy common, ambition lacking) he finds the utopian prescription more curse than cure. Personal melodrama, likely inspired by infidelity and drinking problems in the author’s own life, colors the novel—Roy is in love with Bess, Bess is in love with the Flight Lieutenant, the Flight Lieutenant’s mistress (the Mathemetician’s wife) becomes Roy’s lover, questions of secret familial relationships (or not) worthy of a Shakespeare farce or a Southern gothic novel both entertain and, in a way, complicate the larger social/political face-off. Some things are telegraphed, others are surprises. In the end, it’s an engrossing (after a sluggish start) and, for its time, an important tale.

But perhaps the time qualification is unwarranted. While fascism and communism are no longer in full vigor, their promises debunked with enormously tragic evidence by history, there is still the utopian path of reactionary fundamentalism, particularly in the Islamic world, which is paved with a conscience-free terrorism—and a terrorism that, like Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s, is cannibalistic, devouring Muslims with a wanton zeal greater even than it displays against its supposed external “enemies.” And there is the reactive democratic fear that prompts the bellicose, but weak-hearted, to attack the principles of liberal democracy (freedom, tolerance, law) in order to defend it, a path that, intentionally or not, tracks back in however a meandering-course to fascism. So maybe The Aerodome is still an important book.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately rather unsatisfying. The main character's switches of allegiance I found lacking in motivation and the rush of revelations towards the end strained credulity

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anthony Burgess included this in 99 Novels. It seems it influenced both A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed. Like them, this is a story about messy, irrational humanity triumphing over soulless order and progress. A fable in sci-fi clothing, its promising ideas don’t translate into involving characters. The middle section, where novels usually sag, is as engaging as a barcode.

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. I can't understand why it was out of print for so long, or why it isn't better known. It is in the line of Wells, Huxley and Orwell and it is the most Kafkaesque novel I have ever read by a writer who isn't named Franz Kafka. It is also an obvious influence on JG Ballard. Rex Warner needs to be rediscovered.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found ‘The Aerodrome: A Love Story’ via the dystopia library catalogue keyword search, having never heard of it before. As has been the case with the majority of books I discovered in said search, I wouldn’t call it a dystopia. It’s an allegorical fable and seems to me very much like the oeuvre of Magnus Mills. Perhaps a little more pointed, yet the deadpan tone, dark humour, and level of abstraction are very similar. Of course, Mills started publishing nearly sixty years after ‘The Aerodrome’ - I wonder if it was an influence on him? Anyway, the narrative is an evident allegory for the rise of fascism. The titular aerodrome impinges upon and then takes over the village; Roy the narrator joins the ranks of the air force then comes to see how empty it is. Woven into the tale are an extraordinary series of melodramas worthy of Sophoclean tragedy or perhaps a soap opera. Is anyone in the village who they say they are? Are they all secretly related to one another? Who will dramatically die next?

While I could appreciate the acuity of the allegory, my enjoyment was limited somewhat by the tiresomeness of Roy the narrator. His romantic travails take up a lot of space, perhaps demonstrating that people get so caught up in their love lives that they fail to notice fascist takeovers. None of the characters are particularly good people and, to his credit, Warner doesn’t suggest that the pre-aerodrome village and it’s residents were perfect. They appear to have spent most of their time getting drunk and covering up dark secrets. Nonetheless, the casual brutality and horror of the fascist aerodrome are much worse. The book clearly shows how a young man like Roy can be sucked into such a regime, while also demonstrating the emptiness of an ideology obsessed with discipline and cleanliness. The most memorable passages concerned the Air Vice-Marshall, who is quite possibly a pen portrait of a specific nazi. Here Roy reflects on the man’s effect during an incredibly misogynistic speech on sex:

Surprising as had been much that we had heard, no one, it seemed, had for that reason allowed his attention to wander; and this fact seemed to me a tribute to the personal force of the man before us who, without any obvious effort or deliberate style of oratory, still compelled us to hang upon his words and to remember them, as I knew we should do, long after his speech was finished. Even now, though we as yet did not perfectly understand the creed and faith that was being put before us, and though there was more of severity than of comfort in what was being said, nevertheless we listened to him with a kind of joy, for it seemed that his own confidence was was infused into us so that we believed that any conclusion which he reached must be accurate, necessary, and inspiring.

This later speech from the Air Vice-Marshall is especially chilling:

”I should like you to understand,” he would say, “that it is by no means sufficient to blame society for its inefficiency, its waste, its stupidity. These are merely symptoms. It is against the souls of the people themselves that we are fighting. It is each and every one of their ideas that we must detest. Think of them as earth-bound, grovelling from one piece of mud to another, and feebly imagining distinctions between the two, incapable of envisaging a distant objective, tied up forever in their miserable and unimportant histories, indeed in the whole wretched and blind history of life on earth. Religion, which for many centuries was did exercise an ennobling, if a misleading, effect, has gone. The race which we, of all people, are now required to protect is a race of money-makers and sentimentalists, undisciplined except by forces which they do not understand, insensitive to all except the lowest, the most ordinary, the most mechanical stimuli. Protect it! We shall destroy what we cannot change.”

It occurred to me when I finished the book what was missing from the fascism allegory: racism. The village is apparently without any minorities who can be persecuted; the villagers are all condemned of a piece in the speech above. They are killed accidentally and when they rebel, but there's no genocide. It’s an interesting omission. This leaves the regime to be defined by militarism, nationalism, an implied shift from agriculture to industry, and this expressed desire for social transformation. The gender politics are somewhat peculiar and don’t map to fascism well at all. Airmen are not allowed to have children, rather than being expected to spawn a master race. The roles of women seem to be as sex objects and sympathetic confidantes rather than mothers, both inside and outside the aerodrome. On the other hand, two women lead what resistance there is to the aerodrome and one them lays down her life for it. I think Roy’s point of view minimises their actual role, as he only seems to pay attention to women while judging their attractiveness (‘in her youth she must have been a remarkably handsome woman’ recurs) or actually having sex with them. He also comments constantly on the attractiveness of the Flight-Lieutenant, who inducts him into the aerodrome. Roy introduces him as ‘remarkably handsome’ and continues make similar references even when they are at odds. Is this making a point about the psycho-sexual subtext of fascism, or just incidental melodrama? Who knows.

The 2007 edition that I read includes an introduction by Michael Moorcock, which provides some useful background on Warner (apparently Roy is a bit of a self-insert). Moorcock compares ‘The Aerodrome’ with The Old Men at the Zoo, which I was distinctly disappointed by. I found Warner’s allegory much more effective, albeit not without flaws. The combination of romantic drama and political metaphor sometimes jarred. The deus ex machina ending was downright unsatisfactory. Nonetheless, there are moments of profundity and an effective message that rural England could slide into fascism through sheer inertia. Although I didn’t like him at all, I found Roy an interesting narrative voice. Also, I have a soft spot for long sentences and cynicism. This struck me as a very cynical novel.

[Russell Mark Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate the phrase "I really wanted to like this." That said, I really wanted to like this book. I did, but to mean it, to have really liked it, I would have probably read it in two or three days as opposed to the five or six days that it actually took me. I suppose it would be easier for someone reading this to understand what exactly I did like and what I didn't. So without any further ado, here is my litany of ambivalence:

I liked...

the theme, some of the characters, the conflict between village and military complex, the distopian overtones, the use of metaphor, the first chapter and few of the others, the prose and I suppose most of all (which segues somewhat crudely to my dislikes) was the potential this book held.

I didn't like (in some places "like" should be replaced with "believe")...
the use of past tense narrative (the main character's emotional and mental progress would have been far more credible if it were given in the present tense and without the use of continual reflection), the relationship between Roy and Bess, the relationship (actually, I didn't really believe any of the relationships and that might be the reason for why this book was such hard going. In similar novels (1984, Catch 22...), the relationships allow the reader to settle into the unfamiliar terrain of an imagined or exaggerated distopian world.) between the Roy and the Flight Lieutenant, style of grammar, the conflict between Roy and seemingly everyone and everything (including himself), and the overall use of platitudes in the place of explorationary philosophical discourse.

I suppose in the end, I do kind of like this book, but more for concept and context than concrete and content. I think this book exists twice for me. One is the physical book that I've read and now sits on my shelf. The other exists in my imagination as possibilites and optimistic potential.

In other words:

Read this book. Maybe.

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

You have to read this book.

This is the one of those little known gems that nearly everybody I know who winds up reading it winds up loving it. It's the story of an English village and how it transforms when a military base moves in. It's a great story of modernity--how modernization changes peoples lives, bringing in benefits but crowdint out other things. It's a pretty good love story--of many loves, romantic love, spiritual love, love of ideas. It also attempts to explain how fascism can take hold in apparently peaceful, moral people.

Great characters--its young protagonist, Roy, is all of us, trying to find his way in a changing world. The most interesting character is the Air Vice Marshall, the stand in for fascim, who is probably the most likeable, appealing character in the book--which is what makes it all the more frightening.

A real gem and a "lost" classic. Can't recommend it highly enough.

[Freddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting commentary on creeping fascism served with a generous helping of soap opera melodrama (of "who's your daddy" flavor). I don't feel emotionally engaged with the main character (he's a bit annoying lol), but the story presents some nice concepts about fascistic indoctrination - and how it ties with the melodramatic stuff going on - that fascinates me.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rex Warner is these days more known for his translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War than for his fiction. But it's still worth reading his 1941 work The Aerodrome - one of ten he wrote - because though it's flawed, it contains an odd power.

Indeed, the book has earned praise from both Anthony Burgess and J.G. Ballard. The latter isn't surprising, as Warner's writing exhibits the same urban sterility and fascination with process and mechanism that haunts Ballard's works.

While it's subtitled as a love story, the work is really an observation on the influence of power: particularly the power of the military. It details the insertion of an air force - Warner takes pains to ensure it's not the Air Force - into a community, and charts the changes it brings. There's definitely a sort of bucolic prelapsarian air to the village in the beginning of the book, but as the old standard-bearers fall by the wayside - the reverend and the squire - it's supplanted by a fascist elegance.

Rather than standard-bearers of a clean, technological solution to war, as heroism personified, the air force in The Aerodrome is a perverse beast: it's run by opportunists who are protected even when they murder. There's a sense that the government lacks the ability or the will to rein in the organisation - indeed, the air force seems to be the highest power in the land, once the squire is out of the picture. There's very much an air of us and them, and through the plight of Roy - a stand-in for the author, it appears - we observe the transformation of one man from one side to the other.

Love does feature in the work, though it's shown continually as a weakness. There's a rules against airmen becoming ensnared in romance - though sexual freedom is acknowledged, if not encouraged - and characters who allow themselves to engage in romance are almost certainly marked for doom. Personal connections - family - are worthless to the denizens of the aerodrome, and so the disintegration of such units is charted dispassionately. There's the sense Warner is bitter, at least about the fleeting happiness of love, and it suits the book's overwhelming drive towards mechanisation, modernity. There's a coldness in the middle of these green and pleasant fields that's unshakeable, unstoppable.

The strangeness of the book cannot be maintained, however: it careens more into melodrama the longer it goes on, and then - rather aptly - nose-dives into its ending. It's disappointing, as the atmosphere of subtle transformation and the uncertain motives that make the bulk of the book's interest dissipate pretty quickly as the soap-opera quotient increases.

Warner's book hasn't aged particularly well, but it's an unsettling read that creates a great sense of place. It fails in creating high drama, but if viewed as an odd piece of portraiture, it's a moderately dystopian success.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Locked into its moment in time, The Aerodrome is cursed with always being thought of in relation to Orwell's 1984, that was released 8 years afterwards. Arguably neither of them are great character studies, but what they articulate about totalitarianism is as pertinent today as it was then.

Written in 1941, The Aerodrome is perhaps more influenced by the visceral global threat of Nazism, while Orwell (from my understanding) was 'inspired' by Stalinism, at least as much.

It will always be the inferior sibling to 1984 in my view, but you could make similar claims to the relationship between 1984 and We

[Jason Pym · Rating 2 out of 5]

"One of the few works of fiction in the twentieth century to understand the dangerous yet glamorous appeal of fascism and the less than satisfactory answer of traditional democracy," I didn't get that at all - seems to me like the words of a desperate publisher anxious to shift a slow-selling print run.

A very odd book, odd enough to be interesting, but on the whole not worth the read - there's so many better stories out there.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting, original, and undeservedly obscure. This still appears to be the most available of Warner's books at this time -- finding some of his other titles to purchase is going to be a pain in the ass.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a cute little trick until, more and more, everyone appears to be related to everyone else and you fall out of love with it and realise that you liked it best when he was a happy fascist, and then you think "Well, what does that say about me?"

"When I held Bess in my arms, naked or clothed, I felt assured that I was laying hold of a brilliant, a better, an unexpected world, never thinking that I was doing only what every other man had done and what had finally satisfied nobody."

[Ayreon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Glass River]

Kafka arrived late on the English literary scene, with Willa and Edwin Muir’s translation of THE CASTLE in 1930. His leading English disciple (‘The only modern novelist I like is Kafka’) was Rex Warner. He was a young, brilliant, and highly impressionable Oxford student at the time when he first read The Castle in English. Warner wrote his masterpiece, The Aerodrome, in the run-up to the Second World War and published it during the conflict. Fictionally it echoes the dramatic opening sentence of Orwell’s 1941 essay, ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’: ‘As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.’ Like Virginia Woolf’s BETWEEN THE ACTS, it dates from those awful months when it seemed as if the English Novel would for a near-certainty be crushed to extinction under the all-conquering Nazi jackboot. The Aerodrome’s narrative pivots on the binary opposition of an old English village (presided over by the ‘Rector’) and a new aerodrome (presided over by the ‘Air Vice Marshal’). One represents totalitarian ‘apparat’, the other liberal English ‘muddle’. Neither ‘the Village’ nor ‘the Aerodrome’ has a name. They are generic. The AVM’s doctrine sounds suspiciously like English Fascism. He tells the novel’s ingenuous hero:
‘Remember that we expect from you conduct of a quite different order from that of the mass of mankind . . . Your purpose – to escape the bondage of time, to obtain mastery over yourselves, and thus over your environment – must never waver . . . [T]his discipline has one aim, the acquisition of power, and by power – freedom.’
It all translates easily enough into German: Freiheit durch Macht. To win the war, Old England has to ape its enemy, destroying the principles for which it fought that damned war in the first place. Victory merely recreates the enemy in yourself.
Woven into the novel’s design is a complicated love story centred on the orphan hero, Roy (an alternate version of Rex). Roy – who joins up as an airman – does not know where he belongs. He is a man in freefall. The novel opens on his twenty-first birthday when he discovers he is not, as he previously thought, the Rector’s adopted child (the Rector has a terrible crime in his background). The narrative opens:
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance to me of the events which had taken place previous to the hour (it was shortly after ten o’clock in the evening) when I was lying in the marsh near the small pond at the bottom of Gurney’s meadow, my face in the mud and the black mud beginning to ooze through the spaces between the fingers of my outstretched hands, drunk, but not blindly so, for I seemed only to have lost the use of my limbs.
In his perplexity, the Aerodrome offers ‘structure’. It will, the Air Vice Marshal assures him, free him from ‘shapelessness’. That freedom is, as every Kafka novel and story depicts, an illusion. The plot goes nowhere. But where could a narrative like Warner’s go in 1941? The Aerodrome is an exquisitely uncertain novel, which belongs to a teetering moment in British history when (as in the Austro-Hungarian Empire when Kafka was writing) everything was falling apart.

[Nik Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the 99 Novels that Anthony Burgess recommended in 1984 (Ninety-Nine Novels, Allison & Busby); this edition, 1982, also includes an introduction by Burgess comparing it favourably to Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four which was published eight years after The Aerodrome (1941).

Burgess considers the village represents fallen man, reflecting ‘the wretched or joyful human condition’. While outside the village is the ‘great aerodrome dedicated to cleanliness and efficiency. It is a self-sufficient totalitarian state with its eyes on the air not on the earth.’

Rex Warner explains that he does not aim at realism and considers both worlds (the village and the aerodrome) repulsive.

At the heart of the story is the narrator, Roy, who has attained his eighteenth birthday only to learn that the Rector, the man he considered his father was not, after all. A few subsidiary characters have names but not much description – Tom, George and Mac, for example. Yet we’re not made aware of the names of the remainder, the more significant characters: the Rector, the Rector’s wife, the Squire, the Squire’s daughter, the Flight-Lieutenant, the Air Vice-Marshal and the Landlord. However, the Landlord’s daughter is blessed with a name: Bess. Roy is drawn to her. And the sub-title of the book tells us why: it’s ‘a love story.’

Disillusioned, parentless, Roy seeks solace in the arms of Bess. Yet a further betrayal is not very far away, involving the Flight-Lieutenant.

There are several mysteries to be resolved: the Rector’s confession of murder; Roy’s true parents; Bess’s birth-right; the Flight-Lieutenant’s past… There are some twists towards the end, too. Interwoven are farcical scenes, the Flight-Lieutenant riding the bull Slazenger and the drunken revelries, and also some poignant moments too.

The Air Vice-Marshal is an unbending martinet who demands obedience from his men. He has plans for the village and even the country. He has a very low opinion of most of the population: ‘We shall destroy what we cannot change!’ (p223)

As for Roy, initially he was besotted with the Air Force and its charismatic leader, the Air Vice-Marshal; so much so that he is willingly recruited. He excels in his training and is ideal material for promotion. Yet, in time, the scales fall from his eyes: ‘It was as though there had been something in me like snow and ice which were now melting and gradually revealing a landscape whose outlines I had not seen for some time and barely remembered.’ (p245)

An unusual imaginative study of power and human nature.

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Aerodrome is a complete waste of an idea. Supposedly, this is a novel about the false glamour of fascism. A quaint peasant town is taken over by the neighbouring military base. Some citizens are outraged by the campaign to stamp out family values and religion, while others are charmed by the charisma and power of the aerodrome.

The protagonist, 21-year-old Roy, enlists as a pilot to impress a girl. I wish there were something—anything—likeable about his narration, but there isn't. The narrator seems completely incapable of critical thought or feeling; problems that consume him on one page (the identity of his parents, his new wife's infidelity) seem unimportant in the next chapter. I suppose it's a reflection on how easy it is for young men to get swept up in a charismatic political movement that promises them the world...but the protagonist doesn't even feel like a real human.

Aside from a few bizarre incidents like when dissenting townsfolk are shot in the face publicly, nothing much seems to happen. I wanted to know more about the inner workings of the aerodrome. This novel is apparently "A Love Story" but the relationships in it are laughably bad. Roy is in love with Bess, he marries her and fucks her, but it turns out she's his sister, and she cheats on him with the deranged First Lieutenant. When he moves to the aerodrome he has an affair with Eustasia, another man's wife, but it's okay because the aerodrome frowns upon monogamy and love. Eustasia becomes pregnant with Roy's baby, Roy is excited even though it will ruin his career, but Eustasia decides to protect him and elope with the First Lieutenant, which seems like a good idea until the Vice Admiral kills them. Roy leaves the aerodrome, discovers Bess is not actually his sister, marries her again, and lives happily ever after.. It just seems like...everything in the novel is inconsequential? Even when the characters die it isn't a big deal. Nothing is explained in any detail. Neither the democratic idyll nor the high-tech dictatorship seems ideal. This novel doesn't really offer a solid criticism of either political system, nor does it present an alternative. I'm struggling to figure out what's the point of it?

[Simon S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All these people are invaluable; and all of them are, in the last analysis, worthless.”

Ostensibly an adventure story, The Aerodrome is a fascinating, affecting book.

Roy lives in a small village in the mid-20th century apparently bumbling along in the genteel fashion of an Angela Thirkell novel, all rectors, squires, and farmhands flirting with the barmaid.

Up on the hill, out of sight, sits the aerodrome, a huge complex occupied by the Air Force. Occasionally the airmen come down into the village and saunter about smirking and exhibiting devastatingly anti-social behaviours which leave the villagers outraged.

On his 21st birthday Roy receives some news which brings into question everything he’s known about himself and the people around him. Soon after, the disruption caused by the Air Force escalates when they take full control of the village and its inhabitants. Roy, helpless and increasingly repelled by what he has learned of his lover, friends, and family, and finding himself attracted by the Air Force’s “discipline, efficiency, and will to assume supreme power”, enlists.

The Aerodrome is an exploration of the horrible glamour of fascism, and the way in which a society can consider it an apparent solution to its ills and evils, for life in the shambolic village was never idyllic:

”There had been, too, some cases of the rape or abduction of young girls carried out by aircraftsmen or junior officers; but as these occurrences were common enough amongst ourselves, no great importance was attached to them.”

The abuse of women is an ill which neither system feels the need to address.

Roy - who has very much exercised and enjoyed with impunity all the freedoms of his supremacy - comes to understand his place as an individual within the new system and, seeing what it is doing to the place and people he once knew, begins to be assailed by the conscience and feelings he was expected to abandon following his recruitment.

Chillling, powerful, and quite unlike anything I’ve read before, this is another book that teaches us that if you attempt to subjugate middle-aged English women you deserve everything you get.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd say this is a strong 3-star, but in my mind it doesn't quite reach 4. It's an easy read, big font on few pages and a very straight-forward style. Even though it's clearly written as some sort of memoir, the author seems to have some kind of perfect memory of his own emotions at each stage of the plot, despite having changed viewpoint several times during the story.

The story depicts a typical English rural village, with a very atypical military organization just nextdoors. The air force considers itself to be the guardians and protectors of civil life, but quite unlike the usual military forces, they act with carelessness, indifference and spite against the people outside their organization.

The funniest part of the story, I think, is how this despicable behaviour stems from a desire to "free oneself from the past and the future", not having any obligation except the servitude of the country, etc. Usually this would inspire some sort of Jedi-like culture, but here we get quite the opposite.

On a personal level, this is something of a brutal coming-of-age story, where we find the main character, on his 21st birthday, just having found out that he is adopted. This is the first of a series of events that alienates him from his (supposed) parents, and drives him into the welcoming arms of the air force. It is a theme that we have seen before.

Expecting to find in this book a proper dystopia, I must say that the happy ending surprised me. Not only is it happy in terms of the main character, but the entire evil regime is successfully overthrown, making this more of an adventure novel. I think we could probably have done without this, just as we could have done without the fairly cliché web of parentage that unravels at the end. I fail to see how that adds to the story at large.

[Taka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty good--

My newfound hero John Gray called this book "extraordinary," and so I had to go read it. It's a fast read, engaging throughout. The prose is dense and old-fashioned (with long sentences punctuated by long clauses), but it's always remarkably clear. My beef with the book has to do with two different aspects of the novel, and one is its mode of storytelling, and the other the plot verging on melodrama. Though the first-person narrator is a likable character, he does A LOT of telling instead of showing, so much so that his experience as a pilot in the Air Force is pretty much glossed over, and the conspiracy of the Vice Air Marshal is, while super fascinating in its outline, remains an outline couched in generalities. In other words, I felt removed from the character and his surroundings especially after he joins the Air Force (which could have been intentional, but still...). The second point has to do with the plot which stretches credibility with all its twists and turns (though that's good for attention). Too many people get killed a little too conveniently/easily and one shocking thing after another keeps happening from the get-go until, well, everyone is related to everyone else (which is pretty predictable). But the fact that I read through it to the end shows that the author, despite all the melodramatic extravaganza, pulls it off. But barely. And thus the two stars.

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

Der Flugplatz und das Dorf in dem Roy lebt, könnten gegensätzlicher nicht sein. Der Flugplatz steht für Ordnung und Disziplin, während das Leben im Dorf ungeordnet ist und von Geheimnissen und Skandalen zusammengehalten wird. Roy fühlt sich zur Welt des Flugplatz gleichermaßen hingezogen und abgestoßen.

Der Untertitel "A love Story" hat mich überrascht. Denn für mich war Der Flugplatz alles andere als eine Liebesgeschichte. Dorf und Flugplatz existieren zunächst nebeneinander. Man gewinnt den Eindruck, als ob die Menschen von oben auf die Menschen im Dorf herabsehen. Langsam ändert sich das, aber nicht zum Besseren. Das Dorf wird immer mehr eingenommen. Zunächst von den Ideen, später auch von den Leuten. Auch Roy kann sich dem nicht entziehen.

Was mir von Anfang an aufgefallen ist, war die Kälte mit der Rex Warner die Geschichte erzählte. Kaum jemand wurde direkt mit Namen angesprochen. Wenn überhaupt, dann erwähnte man Rang oder Stellung. Die Menschen schienen keinen Respekt voreinander zu haben. Jeder schien gegen Jeden zu intrigieren. Das war für mich schwer zu lesen. Erst nachdem ich das Buch fertig gelesen hatte, habe ich mich mit der Geschichte versöhnt. Während des Lesens war ich oft nahe am Abbrechen.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flawed, but well worth reading. I came to "The Aerodrome" thru reading Brian Aldis's introduction to Kavan's "Ice"; they do bear a kinship with one another. This is also an exploration of differing kinds love, and also compassion and intimacy and belonging: part of the grand messiness of life which, it is argued, and I agree, makes life worthwhile and meaningful; despite the pain and suffering and confusion we endure, to which all aspects of love may well add. This way of being is then pitted against its antithesis: fascism, with its will towards a "clean world" of order, perfection, of denial of the past and future - for its promise of "security".

The first 3/4 of the novel were wonderful, surreal, dark, funny, absurd... then the end... well, disappointing. Its a shame, as the rest is easily on par with any other dystopian novel of its sort I've read, such as 1984 or BNW; and is probably why it is not remembered and read along with those. Oh, and it also reminded me of to a degree of Henry Green's more odd moments, and I hear Ballard was influenced by Warner... so there you go.

[Andrew Paul Maksymowicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just finished this book - and I'll start with 'I wanted to like it' I bought this title in Mata while on my honeymoon-my only book purchase in a foreign country so it carried a lot of weight and excitement. I picked it up to read while at the airport during a flight delay - and the only reason I was able to finish this book was because I had no wifi or entertainment on my 3 hour plane ride to another country. Should I had other forms of entertainment - or picked this book up at home - I don't think I would have the will power to push through - not that it was a bad read. Just really kinda bland with nothing for me to get glued too and the 'shocking' twists by 2019 seem like 'meh' moments and not 'OMG' moments like I assume when it was published in 1941. But now that I'm finished I feel that the simple story has settled into my bones and has manifested itself into my thoughts- painting my day in brush strokes of Roy and the aero-dome // village life - so now all I have left is the excitement to see how this book shapes my everyday.

[George Siehl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Who's your Daddy? That seems to be the continuing mystery in this 1941 novel set in a small British village adjoining a military airfield, The Aerodrome. The village houses a lot of randy, simple folks and the expanding Aerodrome contains an Air Vice Marshall set on reorganizing the world to make it "clean" again. There are far more connections between the people in the two communities than would be expected. Those connections and the conflict over how life is to be lived, free or regimented, forms the plot of this novel. The principal character a 21 year-old named Roy, raised as the son of the local Rector is the narrator of the tale, told as if it were written as a memoir. Thus, much of story is told, not shown. It makes for slow reading at times, but provides good lists of local flowers and birds.
Critics commented favorably on the book as a strong statement against the dangers of fascism and democracy's tough job in combatting it. Reading the book today, it seems more like an Old Country version of Peyton Place on steroids. The two stars for "it was OK" is about right.

[Mr Siegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Good Old Days

This book is quite old fashioned. As with the books of that era, the datedness shines through, and to some, it may become a tedious read. Indeed for me, I found the beginning to be quite slow, and in general, the book was a bit overly dramatic regarding the protagonist’s personal life.

However, what I found amazing was the subtle change in status quo of the lead character. You see him become, from a small country boy to an assertive young man, all in the course of 320 pages. The change in tone is difficult to discern, though I believe that it is one of the enduring qualities of this book.

Regarding the social structure, I would not really call it a dystopia. I would call it more of a warning of what might go wrong, but I was a bit sceptical of the some of the reminiscence of the good old days. Or maybe it is me, who capitalism has corroded my mind and can never see beauty.

Overall, I would suggest this book to individuals interested in the ‘dystopia’ genre per se, the warning that it gives could be classified as a ‘how dystopia would be like’.

[Davidg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought that I would enjoy this a lot more than I did. The satire on Fascism set in one small English village worked fairly well. It reminded me of some of Magnus Mills work - I suspect that Mills read this early on. However, it becomes a family saga which weakens the concept. Fascism is more than one person taking things out on the rest of their family.

One strange point. At one point in his speech to the young airmen, the Air Vice-Marshall refers to football and the 30 players on the pitch. I can only assume that some American editor changed this from the 22 players that Rex Warner Would have written about. I can’t imagine that Warner would have ever heard of American Football when this was published.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interestingly this book was published in 1941 however - despite the author's assurances - the almost-fascist depiction of the Air Force seems decidedly vitriolic, at odds with what might be expected of propaganda around the time. The Air Force here imposes conditions on the Village and regards them in an inferior light. Yet the Air Force are decidedly British. Putting this aside, it's an engaging read. Our protagonist makes a variety of poor decisions as his 'career' moves from the village into the air force before he is drawn back again; some matters dealt with a light hand whilst others are more serious. I enjoyed it, but I don't think it will stay with me. Probably 3.5 stars if the option were available, but worth reading for lovers of dystopian fiction.