Many thanks for those extracts Algie. What a wonderful call to make and find the man himself polite, receptive and happy to chat. Happened for me once too, when I rang the late Hal Penrose, long in retirement in his Dorset village. For me his lovely reminiscences contained in the two books 'Airymouse' and 'Cloud Cuckooland' are the perfect pinnacle of a life devoted to sea, land and air in their many manifestations. As he mosied round the south of England in his little single seat biplane taking in the landscape, the birds, often the big migratory geese, his imagination was fuelled so as to later write evocatively of what the gift of wings had meant for him. He will ever be remembered and revered as test pilot for Westlands and author of the Putnam series of British aviation histories.
'A veray parfit gentil knight.'
Last edited by Fantome; 28th Oct 2012 at 07:59.