STRANGELY, for someone who makes a living out of writing, I rarely read books.

I’m not sure whether that’s a confession or not, but it is a fact. So for me to sit down and read a book from cover to cover in one session is about as rare as the Second Coming.

However, it happened recently, quite by accident. Which is possibly an indication of how fascinating a tale Palmers Hill turns out to be.

Palmers Hill is the title of a new book by retired circuit judge Ian Morris, who lives in Worcester. It is also the name of a Worcestershire country house, built by engineer Laughton Goodwin in the mid-1920s in an idyllic spot close to Hagley, just north of Kidderminster, on land he purchased from Lord Cobham.

The book tells the uplifting but ultimately tragic story of the house and its occupants and if there’s not a film in the offing here then someone’s not only missing a trick, but the whole magician’s act. It all came about through a chance encounter, as these things often do.

In the summer of 2002, Judge Morris and his wife were spending a celebratory weekend at Brockencote Hall, the very posh hotel at Chaddesley Corbett, near Bromsgrove, when they decided to stretch their legs with a walk through the village.

They ended up at the church and after admiring its ancient architecture, were about to make their way back down the path when the judge noticed a pair of Commonwealth war graves sheltering under a spreading horse chestnut tree.

He went to investigate and found they contained the bodies of two young pilots, who had died within weeks of each other in 1940. Not only that, they shared the same surname.

One was H Macd Goodwin, the other B L Goodwin. Were they brothers? It didn’t say. How had they died? Were they in the Battle of Britain? A hundred questions buzzed through the mind of a man used to sifting through the flotsam and jetsam of life in the family courts of Worcestershire and Herefordshire.

The discovery that drizzly day set Ian Morris on a trail of investigation and research that was to last seven years before the publication of his book this month. He began with local historians around Chaddesley, moved on to military archives and eventually received much assistance from surviving relatives of Mac and Barry Goodwin. For those were their full names and they were indeed brothers. Sons of Laughton Goodwin of Palmers Hill.

It was to be the ultimate and personally devastating twist in the tale for Laughton Goodwin that having based his business success on manufacturing arms for the First World War, he was to lose both his beloved sons in the conflict that followed. It proved too much for the old man and in 1951, as his health failed, he loaded his service revolver and limped off to a favourite spot on his estate.

Before that happens readers relive the glory days as his firm in Kidderminster grows and his family – there was a daughter as well as the two sons – enjoy a privileged 1930s life in rural Worcestershire; horses, dogs, parties and, for Barry in particular, considerable fame racing his supercharged Frazer-Nash up the famous hill climb at Shelsley Walsh. Both lads also learned to fly during their teens, such was their dashing style.

Sadly for the Goodwins, as for many families, all this came to a shuddering halt with the outbreak of the Second World War. Because of their flying skills, both brothers immediately joined the RAF. This was a decision that led to the Goodwin family’s darkest hour.

In those days life’s most bitter news was not soothed in any way. There were no consoling telephone calls from senior officers, counsellors on hand or really any shoulders on which to lean except the local vicar.

It was on the morning of June 25, 1940, when Laughton Goodwin heard the Post Office messenger whistling as he cycled up the drive of Palmers Hill. He met the lad on the front porch and was handed a telegram, signed for it and turned back into the hall.

He opened the envelope and in stark capital letters the message read: “REGRET TO INFORM THAT YOUR SON NO 90504 PO B L GOODWIN KILLED IN FLYING ACCIDENT.”

Laughton and his wife Jessie hugged each other in their grief and cried and cried and cried. Barry had apparently died when his plane stalled and crashed on a practice flight.

Six weeks later and the grim scene was repeated, except this time the telegram read: “REGRET TO INFORM YOU FLYING OFFICER NO 90269 GOODWIN REPORTED MISSING 14TH AUGUST”.

Mac Goodwin had been shot down over the English Channel. His body was eventually washed up near Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight.

Life could never be the same at Palmers Hill and it wasn’t. But the house still stands and maybe on a quiet summer’s day you can still hear the sound of Barry revving his racing Frazer-Nash in the garage or Mac’s Gypsy Moth flying low over the fields.

l Palmers Hill by Ian Morris, price £8.95, is published by Brewin Books of Studley, Warwickshire. Quote code BB18.