THE title of the new book Radar Reflections - bouncing radio beams and all that - is quite inventive, but not half so much as its subject matter.

Because it tells the story of the men and women who conducted the "technical war" for Britain against Hitler.

Parts of it are set against the leafy backdrop of the Malvern Hills, where in a cluster of college laboratories and flat roofed buildings, boffins developed radar and precision bombing systems that turned the tide of the Nazi advance.

The vital role Malvern played in the winning of the Second World War was kept tightly under wraps until relatively recently and some of the men and women involved are still loath to talk about it, so deep does the vein of secrecy run even after all these years

But in the autumn of 2000, Malvern Library hosted an exhibition The Magic Ear, which revealed to all and sundry the war work of what was then called the Telecommunications Research Establishment.

It followed the publication two years before of Beam Bombers, a book by Michael Cumming, detailing the development at TRE of the Oboe system of precision bombing.

The cat was well and truly out of the bag, although the passage of time had inevitably lessened the importance of the details.

Technology has, after all, moved on a distance.

Now comes Radar Reflections (Radar Associates £19.99), the follow-up book by Michael, which was originally produced for the Canadian market.

It is probably not well known by the hoi polloi, but Canadians comprised about half the radar technicians working and training in Britain during the war.

As Michael said: "Britain put out a special call to Canada and one wonders what might have happened to the Allies' conduct of the air war had the maple leaf nation not responded so positively.

"The record shows that the 5,000 Canadian radar mechanics and 750 RCAF radar officers who answered a manpower SOS from Britain and helped to speed the peace, comprised more than half the total serving the RAF's ground and air installations in the European and Pacific theatres when almost six years of war ended in August, 1945."

His book touches on what must have been a galling state of affairs for the backroom boys of the air war.

Because the public loves a hero and as far as heroes go, none came much bigger than the fighter pilots buzzing away in the skies high above. They were shop window, on display.

But behind them, shielded by a cloak of secrecy, were the boffins who invented and developed all the technical apparatus, equally as good at their job as the flyers, but with none of the recognition.

"Unlike those with a full or half-wing to denote aircrew qualification in the RAF and in the air forces of countries in the Dominions, there was nothing in the uniform of radar personnel to proclaim membership of an 'elite', although this isn't too surprising.

"The public knew that aircraft existed and that these required people to fly them; they knew little or nothing about something the British first called radio direction finding (RDF), until adopting the American term radio detection and ranging (radar), where the men and women engaged in this work were in a community of their own. In effect a 'secret society'."

Michael's book covers the lives and times of the radar technicians throughout Britain and although its sub-title "the secret life of air force radar mechanics in World War Two" might infer that in private they went in for cross-dressing or some such fringe activity, all it really means is that they kept themselves very much to themselves on a "need to know" basis.

In fact, as he says, two people could be friends for years and not know that in their professional lives they were working on the same project.

For those who were there and part of this secret society, Radar Reflections is at last true recognition of their vital war time role.

For the rest of us, it's an eye opener.