Short Hops Across The Atlantic

From Aerial Surveying over London & the UK in a noisy twin engine plane to flying small single and twin engine planes from the warmth of the Caribbean, up the East Coast of America, across the Atlantic Ocean, over the Greenland Ice Cap towards the North Pole and back down to Fairoaks Airport near London. A light-hearted look at flying.

A desire to become a professional pilot against the odds and without the benefit of wealthy relatives leads to a journey through some unusual jobs including theft investigator, car salesman, personal loans agent, telephone salesman and finance company repo man. When the opportunity to join an airline is abruptly halted by bureaucracy, a determination to continue flying results in an accidental career as one of the busiest oceanic ferry pilots in the world. Fly along on nine very different delivery flights and experience the literal highs and lows of these dangerously exciting journeys across our oceans. Read about flights from dirt tracks in Russia, fuel leaks in Iceland, mechanical issues in war-torn Africa, low fuel across the Pacific and flying through the waves of the Atlantic Ocean! Meet some of the people, the machines and the cultures encountered as a risky game against ever diminishing luck is played out in some of the most remote and lonely places on earth.

Over 250 rare photographs chronicle flight attempts in lighter-than-air balloons, U.S. Navy's "flying boats," Lindbergh's celebrated flight to Paris in 1927, Amelia Earhart's ill-fated circumnavigation attempt in 1937, and much more.

Commander Edward John Smith's career had been a remarkable example of how a man from a humble background could get far in the world. Born to a working-class family in the landlocked Staffordshire Potteries, he went to sea at the age of 17 and rose rapidly through the ranks of the merchant navy, serving first in sailing vessels and later in the new steamships of the White Star Line. By 1912, he as White Star's senior commander and regarded by many in the shipping world as the 'millionaire's captain'. In 1912, Smith was given command of the new RMS Titanic for her maiden voyage, but what should have been among the crowning moments of his long career at sea turned rapidly into a nightmare following Titanic's collision with an iceberg. In a matter of hours the supposedly unsinkable ship sank, taking over 1,500 people with her, including Captain Smith.

In its attention to the ‘keywords of travel’, Keywords for Travel Writing Studies’ takes into account the established status of studies in travel writing and the field’s significance for an audience beyond the academy. It responds to what might be described as the ‘mobility turn’ in the arts and humanities over the past two decades. Each entry in the volume is around 1,000 words, and the style is more essayistic than encyclopaedic, with contributors providing a reflection on their chosen keyword from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The emphasis on travelogues and other cultural representations of mobility drawn from a range of national and linguistic traditions ensures that the volume has a comparative dimension; the aim is to give an overview of each term in its historical and theoretical complexity, providing readers with a clear sense of how the selected words are essential to a critical understanding of travel writing. Each entry is complemented by an annotated bibliography of five essential items suggesting further reading.

The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies is a major reference work, which aims to provide informed insights into the possible future of postcolonial studies as well as a comparative overview of the latest developments in the field.