"Already by May 1940, after only nine months of war, the strain has bleached the colour from his skin, even from his clothes. Like the man who wears it, his once vibrant uniform has turned grey, as though the fabric – like the leaves of a subterranean plant – has been deprived of the vitality of sunlight for too long.  His hair is grey, along with the immaculately trimmed moustache. His features as monotone as the statue (a slate grey likeness) which a grateful nation will one day erect in his honour outside St Clement Danes Church on the Strand in London. It is an accolade that will not be afforded to his rivals within the RAF, to the men who conspired against him with such duplicity. 

 

He looked when he stood behind his desk like an imperious heron, poised and precise, tall and gangly, keeping watch at the edge of a pond, ready to skewer any fish, large or small, that made the mistake of showing itself. But rather than exotic carp it was shoals of enemy fighters that swam in Dowding’s gaze, waiting to be pierced by a cool intellect, one that had been honed on crisis after crisis, each seemingly worse than the last (a lack of fighters, of pilots, of airfields, even it had seemed at times of resolve, of the famous stiff upper lip)."

 

"Dowding" from the short story collection: "The Painted Sky."