He spent a year in the Air Ministry on air tactics, held a training post at HQ 21 Group, and from early 1943 worked in higher-level planning appointments under Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, attending some of the major conferences, including Yalta.Then, determined to get in on some wartime action before it was too late, Lee contrived a posting to India, where he took command of 904 (Thunderbolt) Wing which was preparing for Operation Zipper, the invasion of Malaya. The chaotic situation they found and their efforts to cope with it over the ensuing year are well described in another of Lee's books, And We Thought the War was Over (1991).In 1947 it was back to the staff work at Air Command Far East, followed by tours on the Directing Staff at Bracknell and on the Air Staff in the Air Ministry. David Lee typified all that was best about the generation of RAF officers who were trained at the RAF College Cranwell between the wars. A fine pilot and understanding leader, he possessed the intellectual capacity required for staff work at the highest levels, and he knew the importance of studying and learning from the history of his Service.Born in Luton in 1912 and educated at Bedford School he graduated from Cranwell in 1932, soon after which he spent four fascinating years of operational flying with 60 and 39 Squadrons on the North-West Frontier of India. His later book Never Stop the Engine When It's Hot (1983) conveyed an excellent "feel" for what it was like flying the Wapiti and Hart against that almost legendary opponent, the Fakir of Ipi.Then, following two years as a flying instructor, he returned to operations as a Hampden pilot on the outbreak of the Second World War. Serving mainly with 61 Squadron, he carried out leaflet raids, bombed ships and laid mines, but in May 1940 his evident writing and planning skills singled him out for the first of a series of increasingly responsible wartime staff appointments. He was also one of the most companionable of colleagues, warm and generous; he and his wife Prue (another member of the CBD team) seemed to be a perfect match, both personally and professionally.

He died last June, but the library profession has only now become aware of his death.Garry Humphreys. He made the Commercial Reference Room world-famous - as much by the skill of its small staff as by the stock - and the service that all others in the field aspired to emulate.George Henderson was a tall man, of striking appearance, brisk manner and trenchant views, which he was unafraid to express when required. He also lectured for many years on the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (Aslib)'s business information courses, and he was an inspiration in the 1960s and 1970s to the new generation of fledgling business librarians.His influence remained, particularly at Guildhall, for a long while after he left. In 1963 Henderson left Guildhall to become a director of Kelly's Directories, but he soon realised that the best way of achieving his aims was to devote himself full-time to CBD Research Limited, the company he had set up in 1961.In the wider field, Henderson was involved in the setting up of both the European and the British Associations of Directory Publishers and served as chairman of each.

To thwart the spread of fraudulent directories he was successful in lobbying Parliament for the inclusion of directories in the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971. It was this sort of attention to detail that made these publications so valuable to librarians and other users, because the compilers themselves had been professional users of directories. The need for this pointed to the paucity of sources, and may have been the spur for Henderson to build on this experience by compiling and publishing those guides himself.Thus in due course came Current British Directories, first published in 1953 and followed eventually by companion volumes for Europe, Australasia and Africa, and others (including the Directory of British Associations and Councils, Committees and Boards), many of which continue to be produced and highly rated for their meticulous compilation.Entries in Current British Directories and similar titles were so far as possible compiled from actual copies of the books themselves, rather than from second-hand bibliographical data or publishers' blurbs. In the early days, too, there were guides to particular areas of stock and to their interpretation (for example, how to find and decipher entries in overseas telephone directories) as well as calls for answers to questions in a feature called "The Search Continues".