In a slip case.Black and green cloth binding with white title.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available. 

•      Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list    

Please view our photographs and read the rubric on the interior. The market value for the 2017 Folio Society edition of Reach for the Sky by Paul Brickhill in Fine condition generally ranges between £35.00 and £60.00.Recent secondary market listings for this specific collector’s volume indicate the following benchmark prices:

• £50.00: Current retail benchmark for a copy in “Fine/New” condition including its original slipcase from specialized independent booksellers.
• £60.00: Upper-tier valuation for pristine, well-preserved copies in the secondary charity/collector market.
• £35.99: Starting point for copies in “Used – Good” condition showing minor external wear.
• Because this version is sought after by aviation history collectors for its striking black and blue cloth binding and illustrated slipcase, keeping the book in a pet-free, smoke-free environment out of direct sunlight will help ensure it maintains its “Fine” condition appraisal. 

Because the book is currently out of stock on the official Folio Society UK Store (where it originally retailed for £44.95), secondary market demand dictates the price. A Fine condition copy complete with a flawless slipcase holds its value well and should easily fetch £45 to £50. 

‘The blue of the cloth binding was exactly the color of the sky at twenty thousand feet—not the friendly, pale hue seen from the ground, but that deep, cold, infinite sapphire where the air thinned and engines screamed.

Douglas Bader’s fingers, or what remained of his connection to the world after the crash in ’31, didn’t feel the texture of the book. But the man who held it now, sitting in a quiet room in Yorkshire, felt it for him. He traced the silver lettering of the title on the spine: Reach for the Sky.

It was the 2017 Folio Society edition, heavy, immaculate, and housed in an illustrated slipcase that kept the dust of the modern world at bay. To the casual eye, it was a beautiful object of paper, thread, and boards. To the man holding it, it was a capsule of pure defiance.

He pulled the volume from its sleeve. The book was in Fine condition. No fading to the spine, no bumps to the corners, the pages crisp and white as a fresh morning over the English Channel. It felt almost wrong for a story so violent, so turbulent, and so loud with the roar of Merlin engines to be trapped in something so perfectly still.

He opened it to the first chapter. The smell of the paper—that distinct, clean scent peculiar to well-made books—rose up, but in his mind, it was instantly replaced by the sharp tang of high-octane aviation fuel and scorched metal.

He looked out the window at the gray evening sky. It was hard to believe that ninety years ago, young men with nothing but leather jackets and unshakeable nerve had torn through those very clouds, fighting a war on a canvas of blue. Bader had done it without legs. He had fought the air ministry, fought his own shattered body, and then fought the Luftwaffe, refusing to let gravity or anatomy dictate his limits.

The text on the page was set beautifully, the typography elegant, but the words were pure iron. “Right,” Bader had said, looking at his new tin legs. “Now let’s see about walking.”

The man smiled, closing the book with a soft, solid thud. A book in Fine condition meant it had been protected. It had been respected. And as he slipped it back into its illustrated case, he knew that some stories deserved nothing less than to be preserved exactly as they were—uncorrupted by time, waiting for the next person who needed to remember how to fly.