This is a specially produced bookplate featuring an original pencil drawing with white highlights on sepia recycled card by Steve Teasdale. The portrait of Battle of Britain fighter pilot Tom Gleave has been enhanced with a genuine Gleave signature, professionally mounted underneath the drawing. The bookplate will fit most books on the Battle of Britain and would be especially relevant in Tom’s own personal account from the war, entitled I Had A Row With A German.
Group Captain Thomas Percy Gleave CBE (6 September 1908 – June 1993) was a British fighter pilot during the Battle of Britain. He was shot down in his Hurricane the summer of 1940 and grievously burned. He was one of the first patients treated by Sir Archibald McIndoe at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, and became the first and only Chief Guinea Pig.