A review by boundsie
The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary

3.0

Hillary was not a great writer when he completed this, his only book; and the unevenness of the narrative and the artificiality of some of the scenes is due to his immaturity. However, the longevity of this book is not only its subject — the Few — and the confessional nature of Hillary’s journey, but the passion and compassion with which he describes the formation of Battle of Britain pilots and then the daily casualties which whittled them away. His journey to a new self-understanding is counterpointed with his experience as a ‘Guinea pig’ in the care of Archibald MacIndoe, and he handles this with some skill and humility. By no means a redeemed character after his surgeries, it is remarkably sad that he insisted on returning to flying while clearly unfit and died in what was probably an inevitable accident, leaving one to speculate on what a further volume of autobiography might have said.