My mother’s brother, the Spitfire pilot, vanished over the English Channel at the outset of the war. An airfield in Kent, close by green farmland on the edge of a cliff, wet with dew; the howling engines, and a sky crowded with menace: he climbed with polished   boots and pressed uniform over the wing, and waved from his cockpit. The streamlined plane swept down the runway, and rose in the air. It did not return. We are uncertain, still, as to its fate, and as to where, if it landed, he was killed. Yet the King   invited my…