WRITING a biography of your own father is always going to be a personal and poignant journey into the past, and this is just what one Salisbury woman has dedicated more than ten years of her life to achieving.

It is also quite an amazing feat when you learn that Anne Baker is 89 years old.

Her book, From Biplane To Spitfire: The Life of Air Chief Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond, is certainly no lightweight, coffee-table memoir but a serious and detailed study, undertaken through diligent and sensitive research, of one of this country's pioneers of high-speed flight.

The book traces her father's career in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I and his pioneering work in the field of single wing high-speed flight, although he died before the Spitfire actually flew.

Having first-hand access to her father's diary, letters and books obviously helped her enormously, as well as having a vast array of photographs to back up her findings, many of which are used to illustrate the book.

From Biplane To Spitfire is not Anne's first book, but her third. Her first book, Morning Star, is about the life of Florence Baker, the African explorer, and was written in 1972.

Her second, Wings Over Kabul, describes the evacuation from Kabul in 1929, led by her father as head of the air force in India, which she explains also in From Biplane To Spitfire.

Anne says: "I thought I would write about my own father and the part he played in the evacuation of Kabul.

"The evacuation was an amazing risk and my sister and I remember all about it.

"We were living in Delhi at the time and my sister, who was then about 16, took the message for our father requesting that the evacuation of women and children would have to be by air.

"It was a very anxious time as planes had to be flown from the base in Baghdad, but more than 500 women and children were successfully rescued."

Anne's father was quite insistent that his family should never be separated by his postings and she spent many years of her life moving about, including two and a half years in India.

One of the many and interesting Salmond family friends was Colonel T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), and in the biography Anne describes playing hide-and-seek at his cottage, Clouds Hill, near Wareham.

She says: "I can remember him perfectly well with fair hair and a long chin but very charming.

"We had to play outside his cottage because his manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom was spread out inside.

"He hid in the bracken playing hide-and-seek and we couldn't find him."

Anne's desire to write her father's biography was deeply rooted and something that her mother had wished for.

She explains: "My mother wrote many notes for me, so that one day I could write a book about my father.

"I also had their many letters and various lectures about his life, which was sadly short lived.

"He died young, aged 54, just after he had been made Chief of the Air Staff."

Asked if she would write any more books, Anne replied: "I think this is my big effort. I might just write bits to my five children now."

From Biplane To Spitfire is published by Pen & Sword Books, and is available from Cross Keys Bookshop and Ottakar's Bookshop, Salisbury.