Merlin’s magic: I won at life when I flew a Spitfire – and you can, too

All supercars fade from memory when you take the 90-year-old joystick and wind up the 27-litre Rolls-Royce V12…

A cough. A splutter. A jet of flame for good measure and the Merlin is prised from its slumbers and into rambunctious life. Many of you, perhaps even most, will have heard one of these engines, at Goodwood or an airshow. But unless you’re physically strapped into an aircraft boasting one, you can never claim to have felt one too. But I have. For I am in a Supermarine Spitfire, parked on the grass that forms the infield at Goodwood and, very shortly now, I shall be flying it.
We know the Goodwood aerodrome for the wonderful Revival and Members’ Meetings it hosts, but before any of that, it was RAF Westhampnett, a Spitfire base and, indeed, from where the double-amputee flying ace Douglas Bader departed for his final flight before spending the rest of the Second World War as a prisoner of war. Old aerial photos of the base show that what is today a race track was then the