The Balloon Factory: The Story of the Men Who Built Britain's First Flying Machines - Tapa dura

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.

Alexander Frater has contributed to various UK publications - Miles Kington called him 'the funniest man who wrote for Punch since the war' - and as chief travel correspondent of the Observer, he won an unprecedented number of British Press Travel Awards. He lives in London though, whenever time and money allow, is likely to be found skulking deep in the hot, wet tropics.