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The Balloon Factory: The Story of the Men Who Built Britain's First Flying Machines by Alexander Frater (Hardcover, 2008)

World of Books Ltd (10410985)

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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.