Winton Higgins is a writer and academic. He was born in Sydney in 1941 and holds degrees from the Universities of London, Stockholm and Sydney. After a brief period at the NSW Bar he changed careers to research, write and teach in the social sciences, first at Macquarie University, then the University of Technology Sydney. He has taught genocide studies at both, and sat on the board of the Australian Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies for two decades. As a creative writer he won the 2002 NSW Writers Centres short story competition, and in 2003 published his Holocaust-themed travel diary, Journey into Darkness. In 2016 he published Rule of Law, an historical novel about the first Nuremberg trial. He lives in Sydney with his partner; they have two daughters and three grandchildren.
This dramatic story of the human feeling and frailty behind the legendary aircraft is told with imagination and compassion. - Sydney Morning Herald 22 August 2020 If you love aeroplanes and even if you don't this book is a must. There is a saying among pilots 'if it looks good it will fly well and there can be no better example than the Supermarine Spitfire, the graceful and deadly British superhero of World War II. The Spitfire evolved into a fighter plane that could out-climb, out-run, out-turn and out-fight anything in the sky. Pilots didnt like the Spitfire, they loved it. Winton Higgins has written a fluent and brilliantly researched story of the Spitfires designer Reg Mitchell, and the creation of a unique classic aircraft. Spellbinding. - Peter Grose was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and an executive editor of Foreign Affairs and served in the Carter administration. He is the author of four best-selling history books. He is also the proud holder of British, American and Australian private pilots licences, and has flown all over Australia, Europe and the United States in single-engine aircraft. He lives in France.