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Annette Carson has written on a variety of non-fiction topics with a preference for history and biography. Her love of aviation led to involvement in aerobatics, a subject on which she has contributed to Encyclopaedia Britannica. She has served in organisational roles including Contest Director, British Team Manager and International Jury member, was an active delegate to the International Aerobatics Commission of the FAI, and in 1986 published Flight Fantastic: The Illustrated History of Aerobatics, earning the FAI’s Tissandier Diploma.
 
Carson is also widely respected for her revisionist books and articles on Richard III. She was a founding member of the historical research team that mounted the search for his grave in Leicester and commissioned the archaeological dig that found him in 2012.
 
She first started researching Captain Armstrong in the 1980s for Flight Fantastic, aware of his enduring fame as the greatest aerobatic pilot of the First World War. Whilst in South Africa she learnt of his origins in that country and began gathering material for a biography, encouraged by his nephew and heir who gave her a complete copy of Armstrong’s wartime photograph album. The original album, sadly, has since disappeared, but the extracts used here provide a unique visual account of his war.