Cecil Lewis (1898–1997), the longest-living flying ace from WWI, joined Great Britain’s Royal Flying Corps at age sixteen and served as a combat pilot, a test pilot, and a flight instructor during the First and Second World Wars. After the wars, he went on to cofound the BBC, where he was a writer, a producer, and a director. In 1938, he won the Oscar for cowriting the screen adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.
Samuel Hynes is the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature Emeritus at Princeton University and the author of a number of books, including his highly praise memoir, Flights of Passage, the Robert F. Kennedy Award–winning nonfiction book The Soldier’s Tale, and several major works of literary criticism. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.