This 2007 Lanchester Lecture covered a theoreticalresult, thought to be new and in print in theJournal of Fluid Mechanics, andsome lines of thought on the interpretation ofinduced drag and recurring paradoxes which interferewith teaching ‘how wings work’. Some of these werepresented in the author's 1998 Annual Review. Thedifficulties are not confined to drag, but alsoconcern lift; they are no less severe in twodimensions than in three. The flow-field in the farwake of an aircraft is examined with the primarypurpose of identifying lift and drag in a simple andunified manner, preferably an intuitive oneacceptable by novices (and even by those who mindusing Bernoulli's equation!).