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131said, this title may be a little too esoteric for the general reader %u2013 if youdo not feel inclined to acquire a personal copy, I do urge you to pressyour local library to invest in one.CGJThe Bristol Blenheim by Graham Warner. Cr%u00e9cy; 2002. %u00a334.99.It is, of course, a contradiction in terms to have two %u2018books of themonth%u2019 but, in view of the frequency with which we publish reviews, Ithink that we can afford to award the accolade twice. My secondnomination is Graham Warner%u2019s opus. Even bigger than the PoW book,this one runs to 640 pages and weighs in at a hefty 4%u00bd lbs; lavishlyillustrated, it boasts about 550 photographs, many of them beingpublished for the first time, not to mention a couple of dozen excellentprofile paintings showing various colour schemes. In case anyonedoesn%u2019t know, Graham Warner is the chap who spent twelve yearsrestoring a Blenheim to airworthy condition only to have it brokenwithin less than a month. Undaunted, he simply did it again, the resultbeing the one that flew from Duxford until last August when someonebent that one. In pursuing these projects it was inevitable that Warnerwould finish up knowing just about everything that there is to knowabout the Blenheim and this book presents much of this information inan easily assimilated format.There are one or two rough edges that could have been smoothed off,eg Mendini (for Menidi), Hanian (for Hainan) Island, Jahore (forJohore), Harris%u2019 predecessor at Bomber Command was Sir RichardPierse (not Pierce), No 205 Sqn%u2019s Catalina Is were not amphibians,Trenchard%u2019s successor as GOC RFC was John Salmond, not CyrilNewall, and there is some evident uncertainty over the presentation ofthe designations of German aeroplanes and of the use of Roman andArabic numerals when identifying Luftwaffe units (it does make adifference). While these occasional oversights may prompt the odddouble-take, there are not many of them, considering the size of thebook, and those that do crop up are incidental to the central theme.So, having disposed of the superficial cons, what of the pros? Thesub-title of the book is A Complete History and that is not anunreasonable claim. The full story of the technical development of theBlenheim is told in considerable detail, from its genesis, in the shape ofthe Northcliffe-funded Britain First project, through the subsequent

