Virtual Lecture: The Inner World of a Second World War Pilot: From Trainee to Flight Lieutenant in Flying Boats
11 December 2025
On Thursday 11 December at 6pm, Caroline Cecil Bose will consider the life and legacy of Bob Keddie. This lecture will be hosted virtually via Crowdcast.
Talk Outline
This talk provides a new insight into RAF history – covering the training and life of Bob Keddie, a Second World War pilot.
Based on the book We’ve All Life Before Us: A Love Story of the Second World War to be published on 20 March, the talk will delve into the unique collection of letters and diaries written by Keddie to his wife. The letters chart in fascinating detail his progression through RAF training to his appointment as a flight lieutenant and his fateful command of a Catalina flying boat.
The talk will also cover some of the less known aspects of the RAF’s work in the war: the role of Coastal Command’s Catalinas in protecting the Arctic convoys which took vital supplies to the Russians who had joined the Allies in 1941. This was when Allied fortunes were at their nadir. Then many regarded flying boats, which demanded of their crews flying and sailing skills, as the aristocrats of the air.
Keddie’s letters describe how the RAF trained men who had not expected to fight. Before the outbreak of the war, he was training as an accountant. He went into the RAF at the bottom rung and trained across England and Scotland. He also travelled to South Africa by ship for three months of intensive navigation training. Keddie also reveals that aircrews’ families were asked to donate binoculars to Coastal Command – the shortage was because we had lost access to raw materials hitherto imported from France.
Twenty-five-year-old Keddie died in 1942 when his Catalina disappeared over the Norwegian Sea while flying a reconnaissance patrol. None of the ten crew members nor the aircraft were found.
For Diana, Keddie’s young wife who was pregnant, the disappearance brought an end to a two-year love story played out mostly in letters.
About Caroline Cecil Bose
Caroline Cecil Bose, the editor of We’ve All Life Before Us, grew up in Essex, moving to London after studying economics at Bristol University. She has spent her career in marketing and communications. She was on the board of a large communications company before setting up her own successful consultancy more than thirty years ago. She was also chairman of the industry body for three years.
She is a keen allotment gardener, walker and avid follower of tennis and show-jumping. She lives in London with her husband, author Mihir Bose, whom she met at the Reform Club. Her uncle, a decorated pilot, first piqued her interest in World War II. She is currently researching a book on Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil. The son of the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, he was a clever, charming and idiosyncratic man. He lost three of his four sons in the First World War and also a daughter soon after. He visited China more than a century ago to investigate the feasibility of establishing a Christian university there. He was Bishop of Exeter for three decades.
