LEARNING TO FLY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 235, 3 October 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

LEARNING TO FLY.

NOT TOO ODD AT SEVENTY. Most mountaineers on reaching tlie late sixties (if they survive to that age) probably console themselves with memories of their feats or take up some' less dangerous and strenuous pastime. Mr. Douglas Fawcett, on tlie other hand, tells in "From Heston to tlie High Alps" (Macmillan) how, when lie was 07 years old, he took up flying and became very familiar with the Alps from another angle. This book is written as a beginner's log-book, to help people to an understanding of the possibilities and the simplicity of "Joyflying." Mr. Fawcett describes his lessons and the first flights he made at Heston. From there he takes the reader to the Alps, where his real interest and ambition lay. Tlio remarkable and extremely beautiful photographs with which the book is illustrated make one regard his feats with a good deal of awe, hut he deprecates the freedom with which the Press has created heroes, and has made the public think that the pilot must be almost a superhuman. "My Heston instructors laughed such nonsense away," writes Mr. Fawcett. "And later I was to find for myself that flying is not a formidable enterprise; that it is much easier to learn than good skating, and much less dangerous than guideless mountaineering, perhaps offering fewer risks even than motoring on modern congested roads." The whole book- will be very cheering to those people who are thinking that they are too old or too timorous ever to learn to fly.