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Words and Music for a Mechanical Man

Words and Music for a Mechanical Man

Ref: 4322

In stock

Price: £10.00

sadly, flyingbooks is now closed.

{detailed description}We meet him first, aged seventeen, with the press pass of an aviation reporter, at a Hendon Ladies Day of fantasticated flying machines—`a Deperdussin, a Henry Farman, a Caudron, two Bleriots and, small, squat and purposeful, 'Morane Saulnier'. He was already working to become an executive musician, and he learnt to play the flute from one of the most exacting of teachers, the late Daniel S. Wood, first flute of the London Symphony Orchestra ('What is the matter, Stewart? Are you feeling faint?'). A fascinating chapter describes the analytic approach by which Stewart overcame this difficult instrument. It runs through his development as a 'mechanical man'. In all his activities—as motorcyclist, as student pilot in the early, suicidal days of the Royal Flying Corps in the Great War, ferry flyer, operational pilot in France when the average life was about one month, aerobatic specialist among the experimental scientists during the transition from war to peace and then test pilot among the engineers and designers, as motorist—his practical intelligence was applied first to the steps in the technique of what he was to do, memorizing them, discarding useless maxims, working out for himself whatever was missing.
His narrative of experience, packed with incident and characters, recounts the bachelor life of an officer in those days without cant. It ends with Major Oliver Stewart, M.C., A.F.C., happily married; and turning to journalism as a career.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Oliver Stewart
published by Faber and Faber 1967 1st edn. 227pp index 14x21
{condition}good, inc. d/j
{delivery info}
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U.K.tracked
first class (1-2 days)£4.75
second class (2-3 days)£4.25


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