This flew over our house today. It made a wonderful sound - those four great Merlin engines, deep and powerful but also soft and purring. We are fortunate to get these displays because we live just a few miles south of RAF Coningsby, where the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight have their home. When William married Kate, we had the flypast a little earlier than them, and the planes went over our house quite a bit lower than they did over Buckingham Palace.

My Father was in the RAF during the second world war, and his job was fettling the Merlin and Kestrel engines. By the time D-Day came, he was an instructor, training mechanics and flight engineers. He wrote:

"The night of the invasion of Europe, Mary and I could hardly sleep because of the noise of the aircraft flying overhead, and we were aware that something out of the ordinary was happening, as, when we looked out to see the planes, they all had lights on: a thing unheard of during the war.

The flight engineers we had been training were very much involved in the invasion of the continent, and on the day of the invasion, I had a class of Free French volunteers, and they were so excited at the news, which was being relayed over the public address system, that it was impossible to get them to concentrate on their work, and who could blame them?"