(1882 - 1970) Royal Air Force officer. Dowding was Air Officer Commanding RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, and is generally credited with playing a crucial role in Britain's defense, and hence, the defeat of Hitler's plan to invade Britain. He was unwillingly replaced in November 1940. Rare A.L.S. with excellent association, 2pp. sm. 12mo., Wimbledon, dEC. 13, 1958, a friendly letter to 'Lord Beavenbrook', MAX AITKEN, 1ST BARON BEAVERBROOK, Churchill's Minister of Aircraft Production and owner of the highly-influential 'Daily Express'. He thanks Beaverbrook for sending a check, apparently intended for his son Mark Dowding whom it seems had split with his spouse. He then mentions a cause that occupied his later years: '...I have started a campaign to bring pressure on the Government to appoint a commission to enquire into the present state of the law governing experiments causing pain to living animals...[it is] badly needed...I have called the campaign 'Votes for Animals'...I have got about 15,000 pledges...' He mentions his wife's diagnosis of cancer, and the fact that his son has become 'an apparently hopeless alcoholic with bad duodenal ulcers...he underwent a drastic 'cure' which was entirely successful, and he is now entirely T.T...' Marginal file holes cost some letters of text, light folds, else very good.