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About Me

Dr Victoria Taylor, BA (Hons), MRes, AFHEA is an award-winning aviation historian who completed her PhD thesis on the Luftwaffe and National Socialism in the Third Reich at the University of Hull and Sheffield Hallam University. Her main historical focus is on British and German aviation during the interwar period and the Second World War. In recognition of her PhD research, she was awarded the 2020 Royal Air Force Museum Doctoral Academic Prize in 2021. She also completed her Masters in Historical Research (MRes) on Britain’s wartime and post-war mythologization of Operation CHASTISE – better known as the ‘Dambusters raid’ – at Hull, for which she was awarded the Royal Air Force Museum’s RAF Centenary Master’s Academic Prize in 2019.

In 2020, Victoria served as narrator, co-writer, and historical consultant on ‘Inside the Battle of Britain’: the second series of the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund podcast series ‘All Stations’. This five-part series was nominated for a Best Independent Podcast award by the Radio Academy in 2021. She has contributed to popular history magazines such as BBC History Extra, Iron Cross Magazine and Britain at War, along with publishing in academic journals and volumes. Since 2018, she has widely featured as an onscreen expert in history documentaries made for BBC Two, Channel 5, the Smithsonian Channel, History Hit, and SBS Australia.

More recently, she presented and co-wrote a programme on Supermarine’s development of the Spitfire for BBC Radio 4 (‘Spitfire: From The Ashes’), in addition to serving as an expert contributor alongside Diane Morgan and Matthew Parris for the ‘Great Lives’ episode on Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding. She also worked as an assistant producer, on-screen contributor and historical researcher for Series 11 of the Smithsonian Channel’s flagship aviation series ‘Air Warriors’.

Victoria sits on the Advisory Board for the cross-party Spitfire AA810 restoration project in the House of Lords, is an ‘Ambassador Ace’ for the National Spitfire Project, and is an Assistant Editor for the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Journal of Aeronautical History. Her expertise is also channelled via consultancy work, from serving as an Historical Consultant for the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund’s ‘Back On The Radar’ installation piece and WAAF infographics in 2020, to researching for BBC One’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’.

Recent Publications

Academic Qualifications

• PhD in History, University of Hull: ‘Any technical education and flying skills are worthless to us if they are not grounded in the National Socialist worldview’ : National Socialism and the Politicisation of the Luftwaffe. Fully funded by a North of England Consortium for Arts and Humanities scholarship. Due for submission in the summer/autumn of 2021. Winner of the Royal Air Force Museum Doctoral Academic Prize in 2020. Submitted for examination; awaiting viva in the winter of 2021.
• Masters in Historical Research (MRes thesis), University of Hull: ‘Après moi, le déluge: Redressing the Wartime and Postwar Mythologization of Operation CHASTISE in Britain (September 2017). Awarded with Distinction, Winner of the Royal Air Force Museum RAF Centenary Master’s Academic Prize in 2018.
• BA (Hons) in History, University of Hull: ‘Hellfire at the hands of man’: To what extent does the Allied bombing of Dresden constitute a war crime? Awarded 76% (Distinction)

Academic Publications

• Upcoming book chapter on Winston Churchill’s wartime bombing policy for an edited companion to his life [Date TBC; publisher contractually withheld]
• Upcoming  journal article on the National Socialist Flyers Corps [editing stage]
• Journal article on European aviation diplomacy in the interwar period, 2021 [publisher contractually withheld]

Media Experience

TV 

• ‘Dunkirk: Mission Impossible’, Channel 5 (February 2022)
• ‘Secret History of World War II’, Channel 5 (May 2021)
• ‘How The Nazis Lost The War’, SBS/Sky History (April 2021)
• ‘World War II From Above’, Yesterday/Smithsonian Channel (February 2021)
• ‘The Dambusters’, Channel 5 (December 2020)
• ‘The Air War’, History Hit TV  (February 2020)
• ‘Strategic Bombing in World War Two with Victoria Taylor’, History Hit TV (February 2020)
• ‘RAF 100: Into the Blue’ with Sophie Raworth & Robert Hall on the Royal Flying Corps, BBC World Service/BBC Two (July 2018)

Radio

• Expert Contributor, ‘Great Lives: Hugh Dowding’ with Diane Morgan, BBC Radio 4 (December 2020)
• Narrator & co-writer, ‘Spitfire: From The Ashes’, BBC Radio 4 (September 2020); later rebroadcast as ‘Spitfire Stories’ on ‘The Documentary’, BBC Radio 4
• Guest Expert, ‘Spitfire: The People’s Plane’ (May 2020)

Podcasts

• Scriptwriter, historical advisor & narrator on the podcast series, ‘The Guinea Pig Club’, produced with the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund’s ‘All Stations’ series (November 2021) https://www.rafbf.org/all-stations-podcast/series-three
• Interviewee, ‘Nazis in the Air’, We Have Ways Of Making You Talk with James Holland and Al Murray (October 2021) https://play.acast.com/s/wehaveways/379.nazisintheair
• Scriptwriter, historical advisor & narrator of a five-episode podcast series, ‘Inside the Battle of Britain’, produced with the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund’s ‘All Stations’ series (July 2020) https://www.rafbf.org/news-blogs/all-stations-podcast/series-two
• ‘101 – Operation CHASTISE: The Dambusters’ interview with Angus Wallace, the WW2 Podcast. URL: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/101-operationchastise-
  the-dambusters/id982003188?i=1000451863175

YouTube 

• Interviewee, ‘The Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain’, WW2TV (September 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfLoBpKL088&t=4924s&ab_channel=WW2TV
• Expert Contributor, ‘Real Fake History’ with Dan Snow, Timelines (September 2020) https://youtu.be/OaH2-g04cIA
• Livestream interview with Dan Snow, ‘The Blitz and the War At Home with Victoria Taylor’, Timeline – World History Documentaries (4 May 2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSd8tdvhmZs&t=1117s

Most Recent Talks 

• Victoria Taylor, ‘”Upon departure, the fires could still be seen 80 to 100 kilometres away”: The Hull Blitz in Nazi Propaganda’, Historical Association: Hull & East Riding Branch (November 2021)
• Victoria Taylor, ‘The Luftwaffe and National Socialism’, RAF Museum Annual Conference (September 2021)
• Victoria Taylor, ‘The Dambuster Legend in Wartime Britain’, Trenchard Lecture Series (Royal Aeronautical Society/Royal Air Force Museum, October 2020) https://www.crowdcast.io/e/trenchard-lecture-the/register
• Victoria Taylor, ‘German Fighter Aces in the First World War’, History from Home with Dan Hill, 20 May 2020 – https://www.danhillmilitaryhistorian.com/archive
• Victoria Taylor ‘Fledglings of the Third Reich: The National Socialist Flyers Corps’, Hull University War Studies Webinar, 27 May 2020 (second speaker) – https://register.gotowebinar.com/recording/recordingView?webinarKey=4526413801015728908®istrantEmail=v.e.taylor-2013%40hull.ac.uk)

Mainstream Publications 

• V. Taylor, ‘The Making and Breaking of the Luftwaffe’,  ‘Great Battles of World War Two’, BBC History Extra Magazine (October 2020)
• V. Taylor, ‘Female Eagles: Women and the Luftwaffe in the Second World War’, Summer 2020 [Publisher contractually withheld]
• V. Taylor, ‘Fledglings of the Third Reich: The National Socialist Flyers Corps’, Guest Post for Defence-In-Depth, King’s College London (July 2019)
• V. Taylor, ‘Operation Chastise and British Folklore’, Britain at War Magazine (April 2018), 62 – 66
• V. Taylor, ‘Blitzmädels an die Front: A Lesser Known Female War Film’, Women’s History Network  (December 2018) https://womenshistorynetwork.org/blitzmadels-an-die-front-a-lesser-known-female-war-film/ [Blog Post]

Historical Researcher Experience

• Historical Consultant for the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund, ‘Back On The Radar’ installation piece and WAAF infographics, September 2020
• Historical Researcher & Advisor for BBC One’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, May 2020
• Researcher for Greig Watson’s BBC Article ‘Operation Gomorrah: Firestorm created ‘Germany’s Nagasaki’, BBC News, 2 August 2018: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-43546839

Media Coverage

BBC Two and Radio 4, Channel 5, Smithsonian Channel, History Hit, SBS

Twitter

@SpitfireFilly

Country Focus

Germany, Britain

Expertise by Geography

England, Germany, United Kingdom

Expertise by Chronology

7, 8

Expertise by Topic

Diplomacy, Government, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, Military, Public History, Technology, World War II