A Rabbit in the Air

[FNG]

There have been a few references in recent threads to good aviation reads and here is another one. After much searching, I recently found a copy of David Garnett's "A Rabbit in the Air", subtitled "Some notes made whilst learning to handle an aeroplane".

Bloomsbury novelist and editor of TE Lawrence, Garnett learned to fly in 1928-9 (Tiger-Moth: you should read this one), when he was in his late thirties (like me). He took even longer to solo than I did, and wrote about the whole thing most amusingly. Many of his experiences seemed familiar, and give the impression that the basic process of learning to fly has not changed all that much, although we now get PPLs instead of A-licences.
During the war Garnett's writing skills and enthusiasm for aviation were put to good use by the Ministry of Info in turning out RAF-related propaganda, addressed partly at the (then) still-shirking US. It would be nice to see the book re-published by someone like Crecy (or do they only do military stuff?) or another specialist publisher.

Of a similar vintage is "England Have My Bones" by Arthurian author TH White (Sword in the Stone etc). I read his account of his first solo (in a Tiger Moth)in an anthology edited by Neville Duke, and wonder if anyone has read the whole thing and can recommend it, as Alibris has several copies for sale.

[mickypitch]

I have heard many references to this book, even Richard Bach gives it the thumbs up. But I have never been able to track a copy down, just out of interest where did you find a copy? This book is definately on my hit list!
For some reason a lot of the civil PPL flying books make better reading than the run of the mill airline/fighter pilot autobiographies.
Cheers

[FNG]

I found it in a second hand bookshop in Norfolk, but you could try www.alibris.com. (http://www.alibris.com.) The guy in the Aviation Bookshop on Holloway Road in London says that he sees copies very, very occasionally.

I agree with your comments on the general superiority (in literary terms) of the civvie memoirs to the military ones. Perhaps that is because many of the civvie authors were writers first and pilots second (not always: contrast Lindbergh's stuff with that written by his wife: he could fly but not write, she could do both).

Another factor may be that many of the well known military pilot memoirs were written so close to the events they describe that it was difficult for the authors to say how they had really felt. Cultural and educational stiff-upper-lip factors also contributed to a degree of woodenness in description, especially in the WW1 memoirs (some of which I suspect were ghost written anyway). These factors also seem to have contributed to the stilted nature of some of the inter-war civvie "adventure" books such as "20,000 Miles in a Flying Boat", and the pilots' accounts of the Houston Mount Everest flights.

I would class as exceptions to this Cecil Lewis' "Sagitarrius Rising" for WW1, and, Pierre Clostermann's "Le Grand Cirque", for WW2. Hillary's "Last Enemy" appears to be a work of self conscious literary faction: a good book, but not necessarily an accurate one.

Did you see the interesting essay on pilot memoirs in the excellent collection "The Burning Blue" which came out last year for the BoB anniversary?

PS Tiger-Moth: if you are reading this, I've checked again and Cecil Lewis was not the same guy as Cecil Day Lewis. Whether they were related I do not know.

[ 15 July 2001: Message edited by: FNG ]