Beryl Markham (1902–86,) née Clutterbuck, was an English-born Kenyan aviator, adventurer, racehorse trainer, and author. She was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America.
Born in Ashwell, Rutland, England, Markham moved with her father to East Africa in 1906. She was raised on a horse farm in the Rift Valley, 100 miles upcountry from Nairobi. She grew up playing with Murani children and learning Masai and Swahili. She apprenticed with her father as a horse trainer and breeder until he left Africa for Peru in 1919. She chose to stay in her adopted homeland and subsequently turned to aviation. As a bush pilot, she pioneered the practice of spotting big game from the air for safari hunters.
From 1931 to 1936, Markham carried mail, passengers, and supplies in her small plane to remote corners of Africa, including Sudan, Tanganyika (now Tanzania,) Kenya, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe.) In 1936, she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, “the hard way,” taking off in England and crash-landing in Nova Scotia 21 hours and 25 minutes later.
Markham’s best-selling autobiography, West with the Night (1942,) reflects on Africa and flying.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Beryl Markham
Success breeds confidence.
—Beryl Markham
Topics: Confidence
You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.
—Beryl Markham
Topics: Awareness, Self-Knowledge, Identity
We fly, but we have not ‘conquered’ the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and use of such of her forces as we may understand.”
—Beryl Markham
No human pursuit achieves dignity until it can be called work.
—Beryl Markham
Topics: Work
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Amelia Earhart American Aviator
Anne Morrow Lindbergh American Author, Aviator
Annie Besant British-born Indian Theosophist
Cary Grant British-American Film Actor
Alfred Hitchcock British-born American Film Director
W. H. Auden British-born American Poet
Charles Lindbergh American Aviator, Conservationist
Richard Evelyn Byrd American Aviator
Janet Erskine Stuart English Catholic Nun
Angelina Jolie American Actor