The Balloon Factory
Author | : Alexander Frater |
Publisher | : Picador USA |
Total Pages | : 264 |
Release | : 2008 |
ISBN-10 | : STANFORD:36105131741634 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (34 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: Alexander Frater’s new book is about a small, largely forgotten group of young men who, early in the twentieth century, competed to build and fly Britain’s first aeroplane. At the heart of his story lies the Balloon Factory, a cathedral-sized shed overlooking Farnborough Common, and its most celebrated occupant, the remarkable Sam Cody. It was he, a long-haired, gun-toting Texan ex-cowboy – barely literate, yet describing himself as ‘a playwright’ – who, in October 1908, finally won the race. Frater, described by the Independent as ‘the most engaging of all living travel writers’, goes in search of the pioneers and, in a work that is part history and part journey, picks up – for example – the Cody trail in Farnborough, visits the hillside above Blair Atholl where John William Dunne tested his extraordinary machine, near Scarborough discovers the stately home in which Sir George Cayley, a millionaire Yorkshire MP, invented the science of aeronautics, and, at Brooklands, begins to wonder if the first-flight crown was, in fact, handed to the wrong man. Frater’s richly described and wonderfully anecdotal journey brings those magnificent men – the rock stars of their time – and the places they knew vibrantly to life.