A special album sets the scene for December's 'Set of the Month' : "within the compass of forty cards, to select a representative list of the world's most famous aircraft would be an almost impossible task… so only aircraft from the past thirty years (1935 to 1965) have been included… aeroplanes that have changed the face of the world and altered the course of history." It is, of course, Lyons Maid series of 40 Famous Aircraft beginning with the B17 Flying Fortress Bomber and ending with Concord. In fact, the first seventeen cards are from World War 2 and include the Spitfire, Hurricane, Lancaster, Halifax, Mosquito, Meteor and Germany's Condor which caused havoc to Allied shipping in the Atlantic. Civilian models are understandably more prominent in the remainder of the set, with the Canberra, Comet and VC10 leading the way, but we also see the U2 spy-plane shot down by the Russians in 1960 and a Vulcan bomber, the last airworthy example of which took to the air again in September this year following extensive preservation work. The album speculates on the future and the "vast research programmes being carried out in an effort to land men on the moon and to create a world-wide communications system".

We can also supply the special album produced for this set at £6.00