Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park is a, somewhat, forgotten hero of the Second World War. He was the RAF’s operational commander in the Battle of Britain; he defeated the Luftwaffe again in the Battle of Malta thus relieving the siege of that island; and he was the man behind the air-drop of supplies to the British 14th Army in their recapture of Burma from the Japanese.

But before all that, he was a much-decorated air ace of the First World War and, during the inter-war years, he was one of a select few who developed the thinking on fighters and how they would be used for aerial defence. This is the intriguing story of a man, born and brought up in New Zealand, who was key to the Western Allies success in World War Two.