As I understood it the OP was looking for a modern take on what occurred over 80 years ago?
It seems to me that, at this remove, a certain amount of nuance of the times will necessarily be lost. While there has been plenty written about these people most of what we know today is merely author's interpretation, indignation, or aggrandizement, interspersed with a few hard facts. To even begin to fully understand the undercurrents at work I think one would need to totally immerse oneself in the era for a good length of time, and be armed with a lot of
original source data - not just latter day books.
That said, like many here the names of these men were familiar to even me a small child, and I am always keen to learn more from genuinely original views.
FlightlessParrot's post is one that I gained something from, and while I may seem a little disparaging about contemporary historical accounts the book references are also useful, thank you.
For me, while I like to contribute where I can, I don't think there's a lot I can say here, except that in re-reading accounts of the four or five main protagonists last night I was taken by the similarity in ages between all but one. Park, Leigh-Mallory and Harris were born in 1892, Portal and [Sholto] Douglas in 1893. Dowding of course was ten years older. In itself this is minutiae, but I wonder if it could have had bearing on interaction between the individuals, and their appreciation by others involved?
Otherwise, and while this is no reliable measure of anything I was also interested to note that of the Wikipedia entries about them all Park's was the most detailed, followed by Harris, Dowding, Portal, Leigh-Mallory, and Douglas. Perhaps the word count says as much about the contributors to Wikipedia as anything else, but I wonder if it could also say just a little about the perception of these people and their input at the time, and all these years hence?
FP.