Don't Tell My Mother

Peter Duggan-Smith was born in 1916 to an actress mother. As she was always on the move he was brought up by two maiden aunts until he was accepted to train for a sea-going career on the cadet ship H.M.S. Conway. It was on the last of several voyages to New Zealand as a Merchant Navy apprentice that his life of adventure began — though it did not always turn out as he had planned! The one constant in Peter’s life was his love of flying; by the end of his final flight in Cambodia in 1974, he had racked up more than 17,000 flying hours–in no less than 70 types of piston-engine aircraft. Peter was small in stature, but a giant among adventurers, with a rare ability to take the reader along with him through his many escapades. Raymond Eagle, FSA Scot., is a historian with a particular interest in Scottish and military history. His early years were spent in Eastleigh, Hampshire where, at the age of ten, he had a grandstand view of the Battle of Britain. This gave him a life-long interest in aviation and a great respect for his boyhood heroes, the aircrews of the RAF and Dominion air forces. In 1949 he joined the British army as a national serviceman and was commissioned in the Royal Artillery, spending two years in Hong Kong before continuing in the Territorial Army (Militia). Arriving in Canada in March 1967 with his wife and two young sons, he worked for twenty years in executive positions with various medical charities, writing purely as a hobby. Articles published included such areas as history, environment, health and travel. In November 1991, Eagle’s first book was published in Scotland by Lochar Publishing of Moffat, Seton Gordon — The Life and Times of a Highland Gentleman, a biography of the well-known Scottish naturalist, historian and photographer, who wrote 27 books on the Highlands and Hebrides.