Walter William Bygraves, best known by the stage name Max Bygraves, was an English comedian, singer, actor and variety performer. He appeared on his own television shows, sometimes performing comedy sketches between songs. He made twenty Royal Variety Performance appearances and presented numerous programmes, including Family Fortunes.
Group Captain Wilfrid George Gerald Duncan Smith, was a Royal Air Force flying ace of the Second World War. He is the father of Iain Duncan Smith, the former Leader of the Conservative Party.
St Clement Danes is an Anglican church in the City of Westminster, London. It is situated outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. Although the first church on the site was reputedly founded in the 9th century by the Danes, the current building was completed in 1682 by Sir Christopher Wren. Wren's building was gutted during the Blitz and not restored until 1958, when it was adapted to its current function as the central church of the Royal Air Force.
Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became well known for their highly successful range of novelisations and other assorted books based on the popular science-fiction television series Doctor Who. Their first publications based on the serial were reprints in paperback of three novels which had been previously published as hardbacks: Doctor Who and the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Crusaders by David Whitaker, and Doctor Who and the Zarbi by Bill Strutton. As these sold well further novelisations of the show were commissioned. In 1975 Universal-Tandem was sold by its American owners, the Universal-Award group, to the British conglomerate Howard and Wyndham. The company was renamed Tandem Publishing Ltd before being merged with the paperback imprints of Howard and Wyndham's general publishing house W. H. Allen Ltd to become Wyndham Publications Ltd in 1976. However, during 1977 and 1978 the Wyndham identity was phased out and, until 1990, Target books were published by 'the paperback division of WH Allen & Co'.
Peter Bryan George was a Welsh author, most famous for the 1958 Cold War thriller novel Red Alert, published initially with the title Two Hours To Doom and written using the pseudonym Peter Bryant. The book was the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's classic movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
No. 14 Squadron of the Royal Air Force currently operates the Beechcraft Shadow R1 in the Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) role from RAF Waddington.
No. 16 Squadron is a flying squadron of the Royal Air Force. It formed in 1915 at Saint-Omer to carry out a mixture of offensive patrolling and reconnaissance and was disbanded in 1919 with the end of the First World War. The squadron reformed on 1 April 1924 and again took on a reconnaissance role which it continued throughout the Second World War.
The Royal Air Force Police (RAFP) is the service police branch of the Royal Air Force, headed by the Provost Marshal of the Royal Air Force. Its headquarters are at RAF Honington and it deploys throughout the world to support RAF and UK defence missions.
Donald Daniel Houston was a Welsh actor whose first two films—The Blue Lagoon (1949) with Jean Simmons, and A Run for Your Money (1949) with Alec Guinness—were highly successful. Later in his career he was cast in military roles and in comedies such as the Doctor and Carry On series.
Brian Hayles was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. His body of work as a writer for television and film, most notably for the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who, lasted from 1962 to 1978.
Suzan Maxine Farmer was an English film and television actress. She was regularly cast in films produced by the Hammer studio.
Emma Smith was an English novelist, who also wrote for children and published two volumes of autobiography. She gave encouragement to Laurie Lee while he was writing his bestselling Cider with Rosie.
James Hadley Chase was an English writer. While his birth name was René Lodge Brabazon Raymond, he was well known by his various pseudonyms, including James Hadley Chase, James L. Docherty, Raymond Marshall, R. Raymond, and Ambrose Grant. He was one of the best known thriller writers of all time. The canon of Chase, comprising 90 titles, earned him a reputation as the king of thriller writers in Europe. He was also one of the internationally best-selling authors, and, so far, 50 of his books have been made into films.
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Michael James Beetham, was a Second World War bomber pilot and a high-ranking commander in the Royal Air Force from the 1960s to the 1980s. As Chief of the Air Staff during the Falklands War he was involved in the decision to send the Task Force to the South Atlantic. At the time of his death Beetham was one of only six people holding his service's most senior rank and, excluding Prince Philip's honorary rank, and had the longest time in rank, making him the senior Marshal of the Royal Air Force.
Geoffrey Stephen Kirk, DSC, FBA was an English classicist known for his writings on Ancient Greek literature and mythology. He was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1974 to 1984.
Neville Frederick Duke, was a British test pilot and fighter ace of the Second World War. He was the most successful Western Allied ace in the Mediterranean Theatre, and was credited with the destruction of 27 enemy aircraft. After the war, Duke was acknowledged as one of the world's foremost test pilots. In 1953, he became holder of the world air speed record when he flew a Hawker Hunter at 727.63 mph (1,171.01 km/h) over Littlehampton.
St Peter's Catholic School is a Roman Catholic academy in Bournemouth, Dorset, England. It is run under the joint trusteeship of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth and a religious order of teachers, the De La Salle Brothers. The headteacher, David Todd, joined the school in 2013 and converted the school into an academy.
Air Marshal Sir Peter Guy Wykeham,, born Peter Guy Wykeham-Barnes was a Royal Air Force fighter pilot and squadron commander, and a flying ace of the Second World War. He was credited with 14 and 3 shared aerial victories.
