Mulley casts new light upon one of the darkest periods of modern European history, while at the same time connecting readers like me, for whom flying is a quick and convenient means of transportation in a noisy, crowded metal box, to a time when it was both extremely risky and sublimely beautiful. “Suddenly I was a child again … weeping to see the glory of God,” Reitsch wrote after one of her solo glider-flights in the Dolomites.

Hitler was quick to lay claim to the “transcendental” during his rise to power, insisting that no public demonstration of Germany’s rising confidence in its divinely ordained destiny could be complete without an air show.