We’ve All Life Before Us

Twenty-five-year-old Bob Keddie died on 16 May 1942 when his Catalina disappeared over the Norwegian Sea. He had been flying a reconnaissance patrol for the protection of convoys carrying vital supplies to the Russians. No trace of him, his nine crew members, or his aircraft was ever found.

For Diana, his young wife who was four months pregnant, the disappearance brought an abrupt and agonising end to a two-year love story, innocent and intense, played out mostly in letters overflowing with tenderness and anticipation for a future free from the demands of war.

Diana Ladner, a beautiful aspiring actress of nineteen, had met the dashing Bob Keddie at a performance of The Beggar's Opera in London in March 1940, a year on from his formative winning streak at the Cresta Run in St Moritz. Bob wrote in his diary of 'a fascinating face', warning himself to 'Let her pass while you can ... but a voice inside says she may and she might and if you don't ...' He discovered he could not help but heed that voice, and eight months later they were married.

We've All Life Before Us: A Love Story of the Second World War is a unique collection of letters and diaries that, on the one hand, charts in fascinating detail Bob Keddie's progression through every stage of RAF training to his fateful command of a Catalina flying boat at RAF Sullom Voe, and on the other, tells the complete, beautifully intimate and unguarded story of love between two young people, from shy, eager beginnings, keen to impress, to unbridled longing and rage at the war for keeping them apart.