Ascough, Vanessa From the Royal Flying Corps to the Race to Circumnavigate the Globe

The Adventures of Squadron Leader Archibald Stuart-MacLaren

Squadron Leader Archibald Stuart-MacLaren discovered his passion for aviation at a time when flying still seemed like a miracle. It was a new frontierincomparably exciting and fraught with dangerperfectly suited to a young man of Stuart-MacLarens mettle. He joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1914, distinguished himself as a bomber pilot in the Middle East, and was among the first to be transferred to the newly formed Royal Air Force in 1918. Having already completed several long-distance, multi-stage flights to Egypt and India, his 1924 decision to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe was, in a sense, the logical next step in his journey. This biography, written by his granddaughter, is the fruit of years of researcha journey through time to discover the man she had never met in person but about whom she had heard so much. It is a story of unwavering courage and a thirst for adventure in the post-war era, a time when people were willing to take almost any risk in pursuit of great feats. Like the mountaineer George Mallory, who perished that same year while attempting to climb Mount Everest, Stuart-MacLaren was driven by an urge to achieve something uniquesomething no one had ever accomplished beforeand thereby bestow a triumphant success upon a nation that was in the process of healing.