This large book, subtitled ‘what to do with 25,000 redundant military aircraft, engines and spares’, is graced with many excellent illustrations, comprehensively captioned, although quite a lot of them have little to do with the subject matter. Indeed the title itself is something of a misnomer, as the book describes the world wide disposal of aviation materiel after The Great War, and not only the activities of the Aircraft Disposal Company at Croydon. The author enjoys castigating all governments for their mishandling of any commercial enterprise, a position with which I find it difficult to disagree. But I think that the method adopted was probably the best in the circumstances, and the fact that the Aircraft Disposal Company became the biggest aviation manufacturer in the world, was in part due to the shortcomings of its rivals, who tried to compete in supplying what were essentially war machines, to a civilian peace time market, which could buy such things much cheaper and beautifully prepared, from the ADC. In spite of the above strictures, and a surprising number of careless (Trenchard was a Viscount after he was knighted, and not before), and proof reading errors, I enjoyed this book, learnt a great deal, and wish that someone in England had thought, as the French did, to start a military aviation collection, at a time when a SE5 or anything else could have been bought for a pittance.