It’s Christmas Eve, 1957, so the story goes.
The pilot of a De Havilland Vampire experiences a complete electrical failure on his way home from Germany to England. He is lost in fog and low on fuel over the North Sea.
“It’s a very lonely place, the sky, even more so the sky on a winter’s night. A single-seater jet fighter is a lonely home, a tiny steel box held aloft on stubby wings, hurled through freezing emptiness by a blazing tube throwing out the strength of six thousand horses every second that it burns.”
These words are from Fredrick Forsyth’s novella, The Shepherd, a story my family reads or listens to this time of year.
Fans of CBC radio will be familiar with Alan Maitland’s narration of The Shepherd which has aired on, or close to, Christmas Eve for most of 40 years. Readers may also know that Forsyth has written twelve thriller novels including The Odessa File, The Day of the Jackal and Dogs of War. In recent years he has also written his memoir.
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