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The Battle of Britain is one of the defining British successes of the Second World War and for many it conjures up images of Hurricanes and Spitfires swooping over the south coast in the successful rebuff of the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940.

But it was not just fought on the Kent coast. Heroic pilots flew from RAF airfields at Acklington in Northumberland and Usworth, near Sunderland, to battle against Luftwaffe bombers and fighters that had flown from German bases in Norway to attack the North East.

In his second novel, rooted in historical fact, Northumberland-based Mark Batey delves into this little-known part of the conflict.

Warbird follows German double agent Klara Falke on her mission to gather local intelligence on masts seen along North East coasts to enrich Nazi invasion plans.

Author Mark Batey, who splits his time between Northumberland and London.

Sent to Britain in summer 1939, Klara joins a group of Nazi sympathisers who meet at night in Newcastle. The members include an undercover MI5 officer, Warren Sixsmith.

Acting as a motorcycle courier, Klara visits local RAF airfields and discovers that at one of them, RAF Acklington, scientific research is being undertaken in secret.

Klara is joined in Northumberland by her boss, Schultz, who is working not for the Abwehr (secret service) but for the Gestapo. He is unaware that Klara – the daughter of a Lutheran pastor abused for his beliefs by Nazi Brownshirts – has defected to Britain and now works with Sixsmith at MI5.

It all comes to a head at Crab Law, a rocky outcrop on the Northumberland coast.

Warbird is available to buy online from retailers including Amazon and can be ordered from all good book stores.

New book on little-known role Northumberland and other parts of the North East played in the Battle of Britain