Flight: 100 Years of Aviation by R G Grant (DK, £30)

A monumental account of Mankind's mastery of the skies this is a book that is big on visuals - and the middle years of the 20th Century are given generous amounts of space.

It is impossible to disengage the folk memory from much of this stuff - for as well as young men expected to die high above southern England, there are also brief, yet moving accounts of the reality for civilians.

The Lufwaffe's crucifixion of Coventry on the night of November 14, 1940, is a story that never diminishes in terms of tragedy.

By no means the worst of the bombing raids carried out during the Second World War, the subjugation of an entire city from the air in a single night nevertheless somehow signalled the beginning of a new form of terror.

But although the vast majority of these pages are concerned with the military applications of flying devices, it must not be forgotten the experiences of war led to the growth of air transport, a form of travel that it now regarded as commonplace.

So here it is.

From the Wright brothers' first experiments to up-to-the-minute aviation technology, Flight is a fascinating record of aviation history.

From the very first adventures to landing on the Moon, this remarkable work provides a truly comprehensive and intriguing picture of our conquering of the skies.

John Phillpott