Many books have been written about the early history of the British airlines, from their infancy through their maturity and adulthood. In the case of British Airways, its ancestral infancy and adolescence took many forms, and this is possibly the first book that follows the sometimes complex relationships that led, first, to the formation of Imperial Airways, and, later, to the formation of British Airways, that is, the pre-war one that merged with Imperial to form B.O.A.C. in 1939.