CLAUDE GRAHAME-WHITE was one of the first Britons to receive a pilot's licence. He made the first-ever night flight (London to Manchester in 1910) and gave an exultant H. G. Wells his first ride in an aeroplane, circling the skies above Eastbourne in 1912. In 1913, he set a new passenger-carrying record by flying for 20 minutes with nine people on board.
Grahame-White (1879-1959) combined aviator glamour with a nose for a business opportunity. He gave lessons in flying mono-and biplanes at the London Flying Club he founded in 1911 (soon renamed Hendon Aerodrome and now the site of the RAF Museum), where the aerial derbies became part of the London social calendar. During the First World War, recognising the potential of aeroplanes for war service, he set up factory units at the airfield to create one of the largest production facilities in British aviation.
Aerial photography was used in the war, but peacetime left a glut of unemployed pilots, redundant aircraft and unused camera equipment. Grahame-White saw an opening for selling aerial footage to film companies and photos to newspapers and postcard and guidebook publishers, so, in 1919, he set up Aero-films with fellow former Royal Naval Air Service pilot Francis Lewis Wills (1893-1980), who was to become a company mainstay. By the end of their first year in business, the pair had accumulated 2,332 aerial images, taken on heavy cameras using fragile 5in by 4in glass plates, which were initially developed in the London Flying Club suite, with its bathroom serving as a darkroom.
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Denne historien er fra September 21, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
