History Creator / DerekRobinson

* DisabledLoveInterest: In ''Hornet's Sting'', Cleve-Cutler's girlfriend has one leg.

** Averted in ''Literature/HulloRussiaGoodbyeEngland'' as this is only a SpaceColdWar. But subverted in that if they ever have to do it for real - EverybodyDies. And that is very literally '''everybody'''. The only fatalities in this book are the bookie who tries to blackmail a pilot with gambling debts, and by inference, the Russian spy who tries to compromise Silk.

* AcePilot: Moggy Cattermole certainly, though he's just as much a MagnificentBastard, with emphasis on the bastard. Also the Maverick Major Wooley, a foul-mouthed and insubordinate Ace who rose from the ranks. Flight Lieutenant Silk, who in twenty-two years service (on and off) is never promoted, but starts out in Hampden bombers in 1940 and finishes his career in Vulcan nuclear jets in 1962.

** In ''Literature/HulloRussiaGoodbyeEngland'', Flight-Lieutenant Silk is bluntly told during conversion training to Vulcan jets that this isn't a Lancaster - you can't get out of your seat, nip down the fuselage and use the Elsan as these planes don't have an onboard toilet. "So see your bladder is empty when you get aboard as I want no bottles of piss spilling out over the wiring".

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: In just about every book. Each ensemble usually consists of the pilots in a fighter squadron - about a dozen to begin with - and their [[AnyoneCanDie replacements]].

* SpotOfTea: They're British, after all. In ''Literature/HulloRussiaGoodbyeEngland'', Squadron-leader Quinlan says, only half-jokingly, that if the Russians were gentlemen they'd delay Armageddon for a few minutes, to let us finish our tea first. (The Vulcan duty aircraft are at dispersal and their planes ready to be in the air within ninety seconds).

* ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated: O'Neill in ''Hornet's Sting'' (with perhaps a little {{retcon}} added in). Paxton has a HeroicBSOD at the end of ''War Story'' when he learns O'Neill is dead (which is never said in as many words...) The next book reveals he wasn't actually killed, though he was pretty grievously injured and can't fly anymore.

* BlackmailBackfire: In ''Kramer's War'', Major Paulus (the Gestapo Officer of the occupied island of Jersey) tries to blackmail the civilian Administrator, Count Limner, over his wife's affair with [[GeneralRipper General Rimmer]], if he doesn't stop protesting to the plans to execute civilian hostages. Limner retaliates by instead using that same evidence to blackmail ''Rimmer'' into cancelling his plans to shoot the hostages, pointing out that the scandalizes would do far more damage to Rimmer's career than to his.

* TheQuisling: Used interestingly (and largely subverted) with Daniel de Wilde in ''Kramer's War'', the Bailiff of the occupied English island of Jersey.He cooperates heavily with the German construction efforts and works to punish various rule breakers. However, doing so gives him the ability to punish German soldiers who get out of line (something he does quite often), and he passively resists the Germans in many ways. When a TurbulentPriest is in danger of being sent to a damp prison (which, due to his asmtha, would kill him) de Wile bluffs General Rimmer into thinking that the guy would become an InspirationalMartyr when really no one takes him seriously. When Rimmer s paranoid about an American airman washed ashore, de Wilde finds a dead body to dress up like an American and leave lying around in the hopes of placating his anger and suspicion (and threats towards the populace). When executions look inevitable, he considers offering himself as a hostage to be shot in the place of innocent bystanders. Near the end of the novel, de Wilde admits to Count Limner that he has (correctly) suspected that the invasion of France will not come through Jersey, and so by collaborating with the building of the costal defenses, in addition to keeping his people safe, he has been encouraging the Nazi's to divert ships, artillery, money and building materials to Jersey that they really should have been sending elsewhere.

* InsufferableGenius: Skull Skelton, the intelligence officer who's too intelligent for his own good.

* BlackmailBackfire: In ''Kramer's War'', Major Paulus (the Gestapo Officer of the occupied island of Jersey) tries to blackmail the civilian Administrator, Count Limner, over his wife's affair with [[GeneralRipper General Rimmer]], if he doesn't stop protesting to the plans to executive civilian hostage. Limner retaliates by instead using that same evidence to blackmail ''Rimmer'' into cancelling his plans to shoot the hostages, pointing out that the scandalizes would od far more damage to Rimmer's career than to his.

* TheQuisling: Used interestingly (and largely subverted) with Daniel de Wilde in ''Kramer's War'', the Bailiff of the occupied English island of Jersey, he cooperates heavily with the German construction efforts and works to punish various rule breakers. However, doing so gives him the ability to punish German soldiers who get out of line (something he does quite often), and he passively resists the Germans in many ways. When a TurbulentPriest is in danger of being sent to a damp prison (which, due to his asmtha, would kill him) de Wile bluffs General Rimmer into thinking that the guy would become an InspirationalMartyr when really no one takes him seriously. When Rimmer s paranoid about an American airman washed ashore, de Wilde finds a dead body to dress up like an American and leave lying around in the hopes of placating his anger and suspicion (and threats towards the populace). Near the end of the novel, de Wilde admits to Count Limner that he has (correctly) suspected that the invasion of France will not come through Jersey, and so by collaborating with the building of the costal defenses, in addition to keeping his people safe, he has been encouraging the Nazi's to divert ships, artillery, money and building materials to Jersey that they really should have been sending elsewhere.

* ArcWelding: All his aviation novels are threaded together through shared characters. ''Hornet's Sting'', featuring the original incarnation of Hornet Squadron, also featured characters from his first, previously unconnected WW1 novel ''Goshawk Squadron'', most notably the latter's main character, Stan Woolley. Skull Skelton of ''Piece of Cake'' and ''A Good Clean Fight'' appears in the otherwise unrelated ''Damned Good Show'' about Bomber Command, and Silk from that novel features in ''Literature/HulloRussiaGoodbyeEngland''. ''Piece of Cake'''s adjutant Kellaway also makes his retroactive debut in ''War Story'', set all the way back in 1916.

* UpperClassTwit: Any number of them - just look at the amount of double-barrelled surnames on this page alone. Usually they end up dead or thoroughly broken, just like everyone else. Paxton, protagonist of ''War Story'' is a notable example, in that through sheer absurd luck he manages to miss all the horror and still think WarIsGlorious ''long'' after his social contemporaries have been thoroughly brought down to Earth. He even thinks the large pits Chinese labourers are digging the week before the Somme are ''swimming pools''.

* AnyoneCanDie: In just about all of his books. Frequently, nearly everyone ends up dead.

* ArcWelding: His two later WW1 novels, featuring the original incarnation of Hornet Squadron, also featured characters from his first, previously unconnected WW1 novel ''Goshawk Squadron'', most notably the latter's main character, Wooley. ''Piece of Cake'''s adjutant Kellaway also makes his retroactive debut in ''War Story'', set thirty years earlier.

* {{Deconstruction}}: Most of his books could be read as deconstructions of military fiction.

** The RealLife pilot that Christopher "[=CH3=]" Hart was based on, Pilot Officer Billy Fiske, died quite shortly after the point where Piece of Cake ends.

* UpperClassTwit: Any number of them - just look at the amount of double-barrelled surnames on this page alone. Usually they end up dead or thoroughly broken, just like everyone else.

* [[NotEnoughToBury SandbagFuneral]]: On more than one occasion, the funeral rites for a dead pilot are made problematical by the fact that if a man is burnt to death in a flamer a mile up, or if his plane explodes in mid-air or buries itself deep into the ground in a crash, there tends not to be much left in the way of mortal remains. In such cases, the few bodily parts that can be located are placed in the coffin which is then ballasted out with sandbags to approximate the weight of a full adult male corpse. Grieving relatives are then shielded from the full awful truth, and pallbearers at the funeral are seen shouldering a coffin that does not look suspiciously lightweight. This expedient works, provided the relatives do not ask to open the lid to look upon their beloved's face one last time, and that the load does not shift inside the coffin...
* SeriesContinuityError: Quite a big one. In ''A Piece of Cake'', the bluff and energetic Air Commodore "Baggy" Bletchley appears to die a [[ToiletHumour painful and embarrassing death]] - he is trapped in the toilet when a German fighter raids the airstrip, and the portable lavatory is seen bowling across the field in a hail of machine-gun and cannon fire. While it is not expressly stated that Bletchley dies, the circumstances would seem pretty conclusive. He would have to have been an immortal Houdini to have got out in time. Yet he re-appears, seemingly undamaged, in ''A Good Clean Fight'' to carry on delivering impractical, confused, contradictory and pilot-killing orders to Squadron Leader Barton...

* ArcWelding: His two later WW1 novels, featuring the original incarnation of Hornet Squadron, also featured characters from his first, previously unconnected WW1 novel ''Goshawk Squadron''.

His aviation novels are best known divided into two quartets

Derek Robinson (born 12 April 1932) is an English writer. He wrote three novels about UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, three about UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, and several more about spies and secret agents. Other works include ''Literature/HulloRussiaGoodbyeEngland'', about the British pilots who would have nuked Russia in any outbreak of WorldWarIII. He broke from type to produce ''Kentucky Blues'', a generational novel about the Deep South before, during, and after the American Civil War. All are BlackComedy edging toward {{satire}}.

* UsefulNotes/WorldWarI: ''Goshawk Squadron'', ''War Story'', and ''Hornet's Sting''. All feature the exploits of the Royal Flying Corps.