Cecil Lewis (1898-1997), the longest-living flying ace from WWI, joined Great Britain's Royal Flying Corps at age sixteen and served as a combat pilot, a test pilot, and a flight instructor during the First and Second World Wars. After the wars, he went on to cofound the BBC, where he was a writer, a producer, and a director. In 1938, he won the Oscar for cowriting the screen adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's
Pygmalion.
Samuel Hynes is the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature Emeritus at Princeton University and the author of a number of books, including his highly praise memoir,
Flights of Passage, the Robert F. Kennedy Award-winning nonfiction book
The Soldier's Tale, and several major works of literary criticism. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.