We've All Life Before Us (Hardback)
A Love Story of the Second World War
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Twenty-five-year-old Bob Keddie died on 16 May 1942 when his Catalina flying boat disappeared over the Norwegian Sea. He had been on a reconnaissance patrol for the protection of convoys carrying vital supplies to the Russians. No trace of him, his nine crew members, or his aircraft was ever found.
For Diana, his young wife who was four months pregnant, the disappearance brought an abrupt and agonising end to a two-year love story, innocent and intense, played out mostly in letters overflowing with tenderness and anticipation for a future free of war.
Diana Ladner, a beautiful aspiring actress of nineteen, had met the dashing Bob Keddie at a performance of The Beggar's Opera in London in March 1940, a year on from his formative winning streak at the Cresta Run in St Moritz. Bob wrote in his diary of ‘a fascinating face’, warning himself to ‘let her pass while you can …’. They were married eight months later.
We've All Life Before Us: A Love Story of the Second World War is a collection of letters and diaries that, on the one hand, charts in fascinating detail Bob Keddie’s progression through every stage of RAF training to his fateful command of a Catalina at RAF Sullom Voe, and on the other, tells the complete, beautifully intimate and unguarded story of love between two young people, from shy, eager beginnings, keen to impress, to unbridled longing and rage at the war for keeping them apart.
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I wish I could make you feel what it is like up there’, Bob Keddie writes to his beloved Diana Ladner. But in these vivid, absorbing letters, skilfully edited by Caroline Cecil Bose, Keddie does exactly that. He gives a detailed account of his training and experience as an RAF Catalina flying boat pilot over the Arctic Ocean. They are all the more poignant because of the tragic outcome—his death in the spring of 1942.
Brian Holden Reid King’s College London, military historian, author of JFC Fuller: Military Thinker
A remarkable, movingly authentic love story, told in the form of literate and passionate letters from a gallant young airman to his wife. Incidentally a historically fascinating glimpse into everyday life in wartime Britain.
Richard Dawkins Evolutionary biologist and author
“This delightful book highlights the part played by the people who conducted the campaign over the cruel North Atlantic and the touching love story of a couple of the protagonists.”
Admiral the Rt Hon Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC PC, First Sea Lord 2002-2006
“This book is an outstanding and heart-warming collection of letters.”
Group Captain Bob Kemp CBE QVRM AE DL RAF (Ret'd), Inspector Royal Auxiliary Air Force and ADC to HM The Queen 2000-2007
“A beautifully told love story of a different age.”
Nick Hewer, journalist and media presenter
“The intensity of the love and affection expressed in the letters … compelling reading.”
General Sir Jack Deverell KCB OBE DL, Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Northern Europe 2001-2004
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