Book Review: Limitless

I’m gradually building a library of books about space, so when Tim Peake’s autobiography Limitless was published last year, I asked mum and dad to get it for me for Christmas. They duly did (thank you!), but when Covid cancelled Christmas, it meant I didn’t get my book for a couple of months. These things happen. 

Tim Peake’s childhood was quintessentially British middle class, and would be familiar to lots of men born in England in the 1970s. He wasn’t massively enthralled at school, but he liked planes and doing adventurous things outdoors, and at the age of 13, he joined the school’s Cadet Corps. The cadets spent time learning to fire weapons and kayak and took lessons on weapon cleaning, map reading and tactical studies. When he and a friend discovered a guide to making homemade explosives at a car boot sale, brought it home, and started following its instructions, you can see how parents in the 70s didn’t keep as close an eye on their kids as they do now….

Tim decided that what he really wanted to do was join the Army Air Corps. And so he did, after spending a summer on an Operation Raleigh expedition to Alaska.

I have never had any interest in the military, so I got bogged down in the book’s middle section, which describes Tim’s military career in detail. Where he went, what he did, the training involved, and mostly what flew. Tim seems to have spent more time training for things than actually doing them. Eventually, he becomes a fully-fledged flight instructor and then goes on to become a helicopter test pilot.

During his military career, Tim met his future wife, Rebecca. Rebecca was also in the military, but she later resigns her commission to follow Tim to America, where he learns to fly Apache attack helicopters.

It