Ron, 20; Ron, 90

Looking back at one's 70-years-earlier self!

Today my uncle Ron came to visit his younger brother (my dad), bringing with him his album of photos from the war. Ron served throughout WW2 as an RAF aircraft engineer, largely in north Africa.

After he left England, aged 19, Ron never saw home or family for four whole years. "By gum, I found the lads had grown oop a bit by then," he says of his younger brothers.

Ron's album has a gaily painted brown leather cover and is full of entrancing images, carefully mounted on brown card. Small black and white pictures of the Darjeeling express, of Everest, of people and places in Burma, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Palestine. A particularly entrancing page is carefully labelled Snakes and Snake Charmers.

And of course there are a lot of pictures of heartbreakingly young conscripts: Ron and his friends.

Here is old Ron (90) with pics of young Ron, cool as cool with slicked-back hair -and his friend Bill with a Guy Gibson mustache. Taken in 1941 when they were both aged 20. They were friends for 75 years.