Nigel’s interest in German aircraft was nurtured from an early age due to his father’s tales of growing up in wartime Birmingham and his collection of bits of aeroplanes, bits of shrapnel and incendiary bombs.He later become involved in the recovery of crashed aeroplanes and through this interest was ‘introduced to the joys of spending many happy hours in what was then The Public Records Office at Kew’.Now retired from his position in cryogenics at Oxford University, he swapped his quest for ‘Absolute Zero’ to committing his considerable knowledge of Luftwaffe operations over Britain to print.