"Colonel" Cody and the Flying Cathedral: The Adventures of the Cowboy Who Conquered Britain's Skies - Softcover

Jenkins, Garry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684860260 ISBN 13: 9780684860268

Publisher: Touchstone, 2000

Synopsis

Part Barnum, part Baron Munchausen, part Orville Wright, part Zelig, Samuel Cody cut one of the most colourful and controversial figures of his age. He was the first man to fly in England, and the nation mourned when his seaplane broke and killed him. During his youth in America, Cody worked the same cattle trails as Buffalo Bill, played the same roulette tables as Wyatt Earp and competed with Annie Oakley for the title of King of the Wild West. In Britain he pioneered powered flight. He became the official inventor to the army's baloon factory at Farnborough and over the years he fought with the Army and rivals to become the first man to fly in England. When he died, his seaplane snapping in half in midair, King George V insisted on giving Cody a full military funeral.

About this title

About the Author

Garry Jenkins is the author of five previous books, including The Beautiful Team, about Brazilian soccer. He lives with his family in London.

From Kirkus Reviews

A rollicking, consistently surprising biography of an American cowboy who, in an unlikely turn of history, ended his life a hero of British aviation.Colonel Samuel Cody wasn't exactly a con man, but he possessed all the same skills--including a nicely developed sense of when to abandon strict factuality in the interest of telling a good story. For example, it certainly improved his stock as a showman (a career into which he drifted after working as a cowboy and prospector) that he happened to share the last name of his much more famous sometime employer, William Buffalo Bill Cody. Never mind, wryly observes Jenkins (Daniel Day-Lewis, 1995), that he was born Samuel Cowdery in Iowa in 1867 and shared no kinship whatever with the man he called Uncle Bill. Cody had a talent for self-promotion, to be sure, but he also had a genuine, informed passion for kite-flying (picked up as a pastime to while away the hours on the Great Plains) that soon became (once he figured out how to insert himself into one of his soaring contraptions) a sure way to draw a crowd. Cody took his kite-flying show to England, where he earned a large following and a handsome income. He was less successful as a businessman, but he managed to keep one step ahead of a small army of creditors as he labored to build a powered aircraft. Undeterred by Wilbur Wright's preemptive flight at Kitty Hawk, Cody soldiered on to build the craft he called a flying cathedral, and with it he became the first man in England to take to the air, encouraging other inventors to adapt his designs. When he died in a crash in 1913, Britain gave him a funeral with full military honors.Jenkins does a fine job of threading Cody's personal saga into the histories of the Wild West and world aviation, weaving a pleasingly reader-friendly narrative -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0684860260
• ISBN 13: 9780684860268
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288