The Battle of Britain had a more profound result. It put Great Britain back in the war. After the fall of France it seemed that Great Britain could make no stroke against Germany except such marginal acts as the attack on the French fleet at Oran. Hitler himself, to adopt MacArthur's phrase, was content when he left Great Britain "to wither on the vine." Suddenly the British showed that they were still in the war and still fighting. The Battle of Britain, though a defensive battle, was at any rate a battle. Thanks to it, Great Britain was still taken seriously as a combatant Great Power, particularly in the United States. As an uncovenanted blessing, Italy gave the British further opportunities for victory in the winter of 1940. These victories may have been irrelevant to the defeat of Germany but they showed that the British were in action all the same.

It would be agreeable to record that the victors were duly honoured as Nelson had been posthumously after the Battle of Trafalgar. Some of them were. Churchill honoured the fighter pilots with the immortal phrase, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." One man was passed over. The Air Marshals were angry that their dogmatic faith in independent bombing had been disproved. The advocates of the 'big wing' received official approval after the Battle was over, as Len Deighton describes. On 25 November Dowding was relieved of his command and passed into oblivion. Yet 'he was the only man who ever won a major fighter battle or ever will win one."

Such were the strategical ideas and lack of them that lay behind the Battle of Britain. There were more practical considerations. In the last resort battles are decided by the men and machines that take part in them. I am afraid that many of us who write about wars neglect this side of it and write in great sweeping terms. Len Deighton does not. After all, if the aeroplane had not been invented, the Battle of Britain could not have been fought, and quality of aircraft is the central feature of Len Deighton's book. His brilliant analysis makes clear the technical problems of aircraft design in the inter war years. The Germans talked big and almost gave the impression that with such ingenuity and drive they ought to have won. I suspect that Erhard Milch is by way of being Len Deighton's hero.

Yet, however ingenious the Germans were in design, and however forceful in production, they lost the Battle of Britain, or to be more precise did not win it, which comes to the same thing. Dowding's superior strategy counted for much but each individual combat in the skies counted also. Here, too, Len Deighton provides a detailed account, fuller than any previously written, of how the British and Polish pilots prevailed. Indeed, in one way or another, he explains everything that happened in those days, now distant, of August and September 1940.

History is swamped by patriotic myths about the summer of 1940. Many of these were generated by the shame of that portion of the British public who after the fall of France declared that it was time to negotiate terms with Hitler's Germany. It was a view shared by men of the Left and of the Right. The former believing that the Hitler-Stalin peace pact would last, and the latter hoping that it would not.

The Swedish ambassador in London reported back to his Ministry in Stockholm that he had spoken with people, including Members of Parliament, who wanted to seek terms with Hitler. He reported a senior member of the British government as saying common sense not bravado would govern British policy. From Washington, the British ambassador was prepared to seek out contacts for such a move. In Lisbon Sir Samuel Hoare and in Berne David Kelly made contact with possible intermediaries to get German viewpoints.

Lloyd George, the "Churchill' of the First World War, wanted peace with Hitler, had wanted it for some time, and seemed not to mind who heard him say so. In Berlin his name had already been mentioned as a possible leader of a puppet regime. Even in the tiny, five-man War Cabinet that Churchill had formed, there was not unanimous determination to go on fighting. Lord Halifax, the Foreign Minister (who had only narrowly missed becoming Prime Minister instead of Churchill), suggested that they prepare a reply to Germany, to have ready if Hitler offered peace on reasonable terms. Chamberlain, now in Churchill's War Cabinet as Lord President, supported the idea of compromise.

Sardonic then was Churchill's choice of Halifax to go on the BBC and reject unequivocally Hitler's peace offer. For Churchill there would be no talk of peace terms. Already 65 years old, long derided as a warmonger, he declared his intention to fight, 'however long and hard the road may be." Significantly perhaps, Churchill went to great trouble to get an important member of the Royal Family to the far side of the Atlantic where the Duke of Windsor became Governor of the Bahamas.

Churchill called himself Minister of Defence, artfully 'careful not to define my rights and duties." Daily meetings with the Chiefs of Staff gave Churchill tight control of the progress of the war. The three service ministers were brushed aside and not even invited into the War Cabinet.

Churchill had his priorities right; Fighter Command's men and machines would decide whether or not Hitler came to London. Churchill, the first British Prime Minister to wear a uniform while in office (even Wellington did not do so), chose the uniform of the RAF. His only major change in the system, or the men who ran it, was to create a Ministry of Aircraft Production and give it to a newspaper tycoon to run.

But not until the Battle of Britain was won did Churchill gain the wholehearted support of the British public. No wonder then that he devoted so much of his time and energy, to say nothing of rhetoric, to convincing the British that they had won a mighty victory.

Broadcasting over the BBC on 11 September 1940, Churchill said, "It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon's Grand Army at Boulogne." Later he was to point out that the great air battles of 15 September took place, like Waterloo, on a Sunday.

The Battle won, men forgot their ideas about a compromise peace with Hitler. Wartime propaganda, much of it primarily intended for American newspaper and radio correspondents, provided material from which a David and Goliath myth was engineered. It suited all concerned, except the Germans, who still today insist that there was no such event as the Battle of Britain.

The Battle of Britain, although small in scale compared with the later fighting, was nevertheless one of the decisive battles of the Second World War. It converted American opinion to a belief that the British, given help, might win. This belief fed anti-German feeling. Until now dislike of Nazism had been repressed, because Americans felt that they couldn't do much about it. In 1940 they began to believe they could do something about it, and Britain provided a focal point for many disparate anti-Nazi elements, from emigres to labour unions.

In military terms, the Battle proved that Britain was a secure base, from which the USA could fight Germany. More importantly, but less accurately, it convinced America that air-power was the decisive weapon with which to do it.