E A 'Chris' Wren - 1909-1982
The Aeroplane artist Chris Wren was the envy of Flight magazine. His column Wroundabout and the
aerodynamic animation of his aircraft caricatures, which somehow looked more real than the originals, and his wartime "Oddentifications" won him an enormous international aviation fan club. In fact it was because of Wren that Flight started its enormously popular page Straight and Level. The Empire Test Pilots School mess is filled with his drawings of the hundreds of international pilots who have attended it over the years. He died at the 1982 ETPS annual dinner—an occasion he would never miss—at a youthful 73 and at the height of his powers.
He was a direct descendant of another Wren, one Christopher,
whose mark upon the English landscape and London architecture in particular, is profound, and timeless. The latter day Wren, in his own right, deserves a lasting place in the annals to which he contributed so magnificently, so wittily and so unstintingly.
One May morning in 1974 I had the rare honour of having Chris seated in the RH drivers seat of the Queenair from Alice Springs to VRD . (So he could connect there with a Darwin flight). His conversation about his long close involvement with aviation luminaries right across the board in the UK was nothing short of spell binding.