Random notes by way of an update…

From the sublime to the ridiculous: from reflections upon fly fishing to scrutinising examination marks from Finsbury Technical College.  I need to go back to the London Metropolitan Archives to see if I missed any relevant records (a confession in that I spent too long having lunch in Exmouth Market with Colin Seymour-Ure; but then I probably wouldn’t be working in a university if it wasn’t for the man who with David McClellan and Maurice Vile enabled Politics at Kent to punch above its weight, and who is the key figure in establishing newspaper history’s place within the academy).  For obvious reasons I don’t want to go into too much detail regarding Fairey’s two years as a night student at FTC (autumn 1902 to spring 1904), but I will say that the official record doesn’t on the whole match the myth of mathematical and mechanical precosity.  Les Hewett, Kiwi genealogist, continues to send me useful information from Napier NZ, his latest missive being a Wiki entry re Aino Birgo, a Swedish actress who made low budget films in Germany and Britain, married and divorced Richard Fairey (1943, so after both legs were amputated following his horrific experience in a lifeboat in the North Atlantic), and was killed by a V1 explosion.  I’m still trying to deepen my knowledge of Edwardian aviation, not least what was taking place on Sheppey exactly one hundred years ago.  A genuinely scholarly study, as opposed to a string of interesting anecdotes [Peter King’s Knights of the Air is an honourable exception, as David Edgerton acknowledges in the bibliography for his reissued England and the Aeroplane], is Hugh Driver’s 1997 The Birth of Military Aviation: Britain 1903-1914, based upon what must have been a brilliant doctoral thesis – reading this thoroughly researched and insightful monograph, rooted in critical analysis, I keep wondering if the wrong man is writing about Richard Fairey, aviation pioneer (and, judging by his FTC marks, fast learner).