Later Life
Peter Townsend spent much of his later years writing non-fiction books. His books include Earth My Friend (about driving/boating around the world alone in the mid-1950s), Duel of Eagles (about the Battle of Britain), The Odds Against Us (also known as Duel in the Dark) (about fighting Luftwaffe night bombers in 1940-1941), The Last Emperor (a biography of King George VI), The Girl in the White Ship (about a young refugee from Vietnam in the late 1970s who was the sole survivor of her ship of refugees), The Postman of Nagasaki (about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki), and Time and Chance (an autobiography). He also wrote many short articles and contributed to other books.
Peter Townsend was one of several military advisors for the film Battle of Britain (1969).
He was a CVO (1947), DSO (1941) and DFC (1940 and bar). Townsend died of stomach cancer in 1995, at the age of 80, in Rambouillet, France. A sculpture of Group Captain Townsend stands in Townsend Square, part of the Kings Hill development on the site formerly occupied by RAF West Malling.
His son Giles Townsend is President of the Cambridge Bomber and Fighter Society currently restoring a MK I Hawker Hurricane of No. 85 Squadron RAF and a Hawker Fury biplane of No. 43 Squadron RAF. His son Hugo Townsend is married to Yolande, Princess of Ligne.
Read more about this topic: Peter Townsend (RAF Officer)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature’s monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.”
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)
“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)