This is a novel by a man who knows at first hand the heady delights as well as the torments of flying in the early days, and reveals through his hero the nature of the men who succumbed - as he did - to them.

Michael Pendragon - the ’ Dragonfly ’ - is an archetypal hero of the pioneer days of flying from the 1920’s to the 1940’s. He is passionate, sensitive, adventurous, a man who knows how to use his strengths and qualities, and yet is dogged throughout his life by his failure to curb his excessive enthusiasm for danger, and for the women who fall under the spell of his hard masculine vitality.

 

Drawing on his own experience, the author follows Pendragon through his career in the R.A.F. between the wars, flying primitive and unreliable machines to maintain the ’ Pax Aeronautica ’ in the Middle East. Little has ever been written about these years of development in flying history, and of the early years of civil aviation, which next attracts him. With few radio aids to navigation, Pendragon has to face the problems of fog, ice, sandstorms, tropical cyclones, and the continual anxiety about fuel. ( ... )