IN THE last few weeks my life has been slowly taken over by the story of a man who died 75 years ago.

Harold Starr was born in Swindon in 1914 and by 1940 he had proved himself to be a high flyer in more than one sense of the word, becoming a squadron leader with the Royal Air Force.

Sadly, he died at the height of the Battle Of Britain, on August 31, 1940, and as if such a death wasn’t disturbing enough, it also had a shocking twist in the tale.

His Hurricane was shot down at 15,000 feet and although he somehow managed to bail out, some Messerschmitts came back for him while he was descending in his parachute, and machine-gunned him.

By the time his bullet-ridden body hit the ground, he was already dead.

Harold was brought back to Swindon and buried in Radnor Street Cemetery, his funeral taking place two days before his 26th birthday.

Three quarters of a century on, I have been involved with a group of people who wanted to honour Harold in particular, but also the other 543 pilots who died in the battle and who will always now be remembered as ‘The Few’, thanks to a famous speech by Winston Churchill.

So a colleague who has connections with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight put in a request for a flypast over Swindon, and when they said yes, things started to get serious.

First they told us the flypast is going to be on Battle Of Britain Day itself - September 15 - then they said it would involve a spectacular non-standard formation, the details of which will not be revealed until the big day.

Then we were told the Duke of Gloucester, the Honorary Air Marshal of the RAF, was coming to the cemetery to watch it.

As if all this wasn’t a big enough honour for Swindon, remember it is all taking place in the 75th anniversary year.

We couldn’t let the occasion go by without organising a week of events, and it all starts tomorrow with a posh reception at Steam, followed by an illustrated talk about Harold’s life in the evening at the Central Library (7.15pm, phone 01793 463792 for tickets).

That’s normally the kind of thing I would make sure I was in the audience for, but not this time, as I’m giving the talk.

It will cover Harold’s whole life, from his birth at the Central Hotel, in Regent Street, now the site of the Savoy pub, to his funeral, 75 years ago yesterday.

One of the reasons we felt obliged to do all this is Harold’s parents moved to Bristol for a few years, which meant that when he met his death, the Bristol Evening Post was keen to claim him as a Bristolian.

But the events of the next week will underline that Harold was Swindon born and bred, and is buried here, so he’s ours.

Amid all the work involved in organising all this, in which I have been only part of team, the story of Harold has almost become surreal.

I’ve told his story to enough people for it to seem like fiction, the plot of a film instead of the real death of a young man.

Harold even looks the part. With his dashing good looks, his little moustache and a photo of him lighting a cigarette in his uniform, he looks every inch a 1940s film star. But he was real enough. He was a real life hero, and he was one of us.