{"product_id":"john-rebecca-casper-john-9780002171366","title":"Casper John","description":"From inside cover. Caspar John grew up in the harsh Bohemian world of his painter father, Augustus. He reacted into the most disciplined of professions, the Royal Navy, which he joined in 1916 at the age of thirteen. Caspar proved no ordinary sailor. When he gained a First Class Certificate in Gunnery, everyone assumed he would choose that traditionally royal road to promotion. Instead he applied to be trained as a pilot. His Captain read the request, ‘shuddered and tore it into little pieces, muttering “another soul saved”’. Undeterred, Caspar applied again, and from 1925 his career was above all identified with the fledgling Fleet Air Arm. By the time it gained its independence from the Royal Air Force after the Inskip Award in 1937, Caspar was one of its most influential if still junior members. His knowledge and administrative skills meant that much of his war was spent in London and Washington, battling to procure aeroplanes and equipment. As he grew more senior he found it still harder to escape from what he regarded, with mingled loathing and disdain, as the shackles of Whitehall. He was Mountbatten’s right hand man when the new Navy took shape in the mid 1950’s, and himself took on the task of assuring its future when he became First Sea Lord in 1960. On retirement he embraced a host of new activities, including the important and sometimes dramatic Government Security Commission.","brand":"HarperCollins Publishers Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53799625326934,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/john-rebecca-casper-john-9780002171366","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}