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Old Bird. The Irrepressible Mrs Hewlett

by Bonamy Dobree
Save 17% Save 17%
Current price ₹1,590.00
Original price ₹1,908.00
Original price ₹1,908.00
Original price ₹1,908.00
(-17%)
₹1,590.00
Current price ₹1,590.00

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Book cover type: Paperback
  • ISBN13: 9781848763371
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Troubador Publishing
  • Publisher Imprint: Troubador Publishing
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 312
  • Original Price: GBP 11.99
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 588 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): General

For a mother to teach her son to drive is perhaps not so unusual, but for her to teach him to fly? Given that the year was 1911, that was most likely a first. But Hilda B. Hewlett had already achieved a first in the world of aviation. Three months earlier she had become the first English woman to gain a pilot's licence.

How was it that the middle-aged wife of a well-known author came to be counted among the early aviation pioneers? A daughter of the vicar of an impoverished parish in South London, Hilda Beatrice Herbert was born in 1864 and married Maurice Hewlett, a barrister in Antiquarian Law, in 1888. He aspired to be a writer and Billy, as Hilda was affectionately known, encouraged him.

When, ten years later, he published his best seller, a romantic historical novel, The Forest Lovers, the Hewletts began to enjoy unimaginable prosperity and Maurice was on his way to becoming a full-time writer and a member of the literary London scene. Billy, meanwhile, was acquiring a reputation for unconventionality.

She already drove and maintained her own car, but it was whilst watching a new-fangled contraption of an aircraft rise and fly above a muddy field that Billy was fired with an all-consuming desire. To own and fly just such a machine she was prepared to endure cold and hunger, boredom and poverty. It was a venture that was to take her into aircraft manufacture throughout WWI and to settle her, eventually, as Old Bird - her grandchildren only ever knew her as Old Bird - in New Zealand.

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