One of the many strengths of the aviation publisher Grub Street is the focus on the exploits of individual airmen. None had a more intensive wartime career than Wing Commander Bob Foster whose colourful memoirs are brought to life by the renowned historian Norman Franks in Tally Ho! (£20).

Foster fought in the Battle of Britain, flying the “rugged and powerful” Hurricane, and was later posted to Australia, defending the Darwin area from Japanese incursions, this time with Spitfires — a rare reportage of this part of the war in the Pacific.

By 1944 he was in Normandy, closely following the invasion, and entered Paris as one of the first RAF officers linking with the liberating French army.

Foster’s recollections are extremely vivid. As a member of a military family, whose father lost a leg in the First World War, he not only served Britain as a fighter pilot but was able to honour in this book the friends who fought and sometimes died in the skirmishes with the Germans and Japanese.

Another great patriot with even longer service is Group Captain ‘Woody’ Woodhall, a ‘gentleman adventurer’ most at home in a service environment, whose book Soldier, Sailor and Airman Too (£20) bridges both the First and Second World Wars. He was wounded in the Somme offensive and served magnificently as a senior controller in the defence of Malta. Between the wars, Woodhall served on warships virtually all over the world including the China station.

This is an outstanding narrative of a versatile career which embraces trench, aerial and sea warfare, finally paying tribute to fighter pilots such as Douglas Bader, who was his friend.

Grub Street has also covered the First World War in ace-like fashion over the past few years and its latest offering, Richthofen Jagdstaffel Ahead (£20), by Peter McManus, lives up to this high tradition.

In this superbly illustrated book (with aviation depicted by John Batchelor) pilots of the Royal Flying Corps find themselves up against the Red Baron’s superior aircraft with synchronised machine guns.

Courage was the principal weapon against the Germans in the 1917 scrambles to bitter fighting in primitive machines.

Here are the fortunes of many Allied aces including Lionel Blaxland, Mick Mannock and Albert Ball and it is their bravery against overwhelming odds in dog fights over the Western Front that makes this such a very fine book.