Clara’s Verdict
Flight-Lieutenant Colin Bell was 105 years old when this memoir was published, and he almost certainly remembers events more vividly than most of us will ever recall anything. Bloody Dangerous is the account of a Mosquito pilot who flew fifty raids over Germany – thirteen to Berlin itself – during a period when one in three of his colleagues did not survive. It is also, unexpectedly, frequently very funny. James Holland described Bell as “one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met.” John Nichol called it “a terrific read, combining laugh-out-loud reminiscences with jaw-dropping accounts of aerial warfare.” Having spent seven and a half hours in Bell’s company, I would not argue with either assessment. This is one of the most extraordinary war memoirs I have encountered.
About the Audiobook
Bell’s story begins in pre-war London, where he wooed his future wife with tickets to the Leicester Square premiere of Gone with the Wind, and ends with the final surrender of the Nazi regime – a span of history he witnessed with unusual clarity and remarkable retention of detail at every stage. He joined up after watching a bomb fall on the opposite side of his street during the Blitz, trained as a pilot in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and eventually flew as part of the elite Pathfinder 608 Squadron, whose precise target-marking arguably did more than almost any other bombing unit to bring about the final German defeat.
The Mosquito – “the wooden wonder,” the fastest piston-engined aircraft of the Second World War – is rendered in this memoir with extraordinary technical vividness. Bell’s accounts of flying it at night over Germany are viscerally immediate: being coned by searchlights, tracked by radar-controlled 88mm anti-aircraft guns of devastating accuracy, pursued by Messerschmitt 262 jets – the only aircraft in the German inventory capable of outrunning him. Engine failures. Fuel starvation. Ice that came close to killing him on multiple occasions. Shrapnel in his parachute from an explosion close enough to leave burn marks on his navigator’s flying suit. He writes about all of it with the matter-of-fact clarity of someone who processed it at the time as simply a job that needed doing, and who, at 105, has had decades to decide what it all ultimately meant.
The book was published specifically to mark Bell’s 105th birthday, and its title is characteristically understated. He is almost certainly one of the last people alive who remembers watching Charles Lindbergh fly into Croydon Airport as a child in 1927 – a detail that places his life at a historical span that is simply staggering to contemplate. The book is dedicated to his RAF comrades, one in three of whom did not come home. He remembers their names.
James Holland’s endorsement – “one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met” – is the assessment of a serious military historian who has met a great many remarkable people. It is not given lightly, and it is not wrong.
The Narration
James Warrior narrates, and his performance is notably well-calibrated to the material across its full length. He captures Bell’s evident combination of wry humour – the pre-war romantic vignettes are charming – and genuine gravity without flattening either quality. The aerial battle sequences are handled with appropriate urgency; the pre-war and training sequences have a warmth and period texture that grounds the whole memoir in lived experience rather than retrospective construction. Warrior’s tonal intelligence is reliable throughout seven and a half hours of demanding material.
What Readers Say
The audiobook holds an exceptional 4.8 stars from 120 ratings – one of the highest scores in any batch I’ve reviewed. SteveTest highlighted Bell’s claim to be possibly the last living person to have seen Lindbergh fly into Croydon, locating him at one end of an extraordinary historical span. Frida, who does not typically read military memoir, “could not put it down,” arguing it should be used in schools. John B. praised it specifically for showing a veteran who “knew what he was fighting for and that it was definitely not pointless” – an important counterpoint to the retrospective ambivalence sometimes imposed on wartime testimony. “Frida” described being made to “cry and laugh” within the same listening session. Dale Russell called it “fantastic” and recommended it to anyone with an interest in the RAF and the Second World War.
Who Should Listen?
Essential for anyone with an interest in the Second World War, the RAF, Bomber Command, or military memoir more broadly. Also strongly recommended for those who have found conventional war memoirs either too harrowing or too nostalgically celebratory – Bell navigates both extremes with the authority of someone who was actually there and has had a very long time to make sense of what he witnessed. A remarkable document of a remarkable life, published at exactly the right moment to preserve it.
Available on Audible UK, Kobo, Scribd, and Storytel. Listen to Bloody Dangerous on Audible UK.
