There is an article titled 'Flying for a Song', written by Lewis Benjamin, which describes the formation of the Brookside Flying Group at Shoreham in the immediate postwar period. The group operated a couple of Miles Magisters (the second bought after the fatal crash of the first).
The article can be read online here, from page 25:
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Putting ex-RAF Tiger Moths onto the civil register was not as easy as one might think. They could be bought for £5 a piece, but the Ministry of Civil Aviation did not make life easy if you wanted to put them back in the air.
If you read Flight (now Flight International) from the period via the Flight Global archive, you can gain a good insight into what was flying, and the types of events. It was far more of a flying club diary than it is now, and it is apparent that a surprising variety of pre-war types were still being operated.
Aviation History - Browse the History of Flight from 1909