The Last Enemy

Richard Hillary's The Last Enemy is one of the most searching literary memoirs to emerge from the Second World War, recounting his passage from Oxford undergraduate and self-consciously romantic fighter pilot to severely burned survivor of the Battle of Britain. Written with a cool, lucid elegance, the book combines combat narrative, psychological self-examination, and moral inquiry. Its title, drawn from St Paul, frames war not merely as patriotic ordeal but as an encounter with mortality, vanity, courage, and spiritual uncertainty. Hillary was born in Australia in 1919, educated in England, and was studying at Trinity College, Oxford, when he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. Flying Spitfires with No. 603 Squadron, he was shot down in 1940 and underwent pioneering reconstructive surgery under Archibald McIndoe, becoming associated with the "Guinea Pig Club" of burned airmen. These experiences gave his prose its unusual authority: he writes as both participant and witness, chastened by pain yet resistant to easy heroics. This book is highly recommended for readers of war literature, memoir, and twentieth-century intellectual history. It offers not simply an account of aerial combat, but a profound meditation on youth, sacrifice, and the costs of idealism under modern war.