Nick Hornby has a lot to answer for. Ever since Fever Pitch
legitimized the (often, but not exclusively) male obsession with
sport, we've had first-person confessionals covering cricket,
boxing, greyhound and horse racing, scuba diving and now
aeroplanes. Picking up some of these tomes, the best you can hope
for is amusing self-indulgence, at worst, it's like having that
sinking feeling when the only spare seat is next to the pub bore.
But this book stands out from the crowd with its hilarious
depiction of male insecurity. Having watched his mate Richard (a
bank manager, for heaven's sake) suddenly pull the women with his
new-found skill with a microlite, a new Jonathan Livingstone
Seagull-sheen giving him an air of mystery that girls seemed to
find irresistible, Woodward becomes determined not to be left
behind. Some people form pop bands to earn sex. Woodward takes to
the skies. What follows is a masterpiece of comic timing and
exhiliration as he attempts to fly the flimsiest of contraptions.
The eccentrics he meets and the scrapes he gets into are genuinely
exciting and adrenaline-fuelled - his near-hits are superbly,
pacily described - while the hinterland of past fliers is movingly
evoked, and this quirky, very English book is almost impossible not
to enjoy. You don't even have to like flying - though it's probably
best not to take it on the 747. (Kirkus UK)
Join the real Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines as they
compete in the Round Britain race. .Woodward's warm, wry account of
learning to fly will lift hearts everywhere. BBC2 documentary based
on the book - 30 January 2012. Antony Woodward wasn't interested in
flying, he was interested in his image. So in his world of
socialising and serial womanising, a microlight plane sounded like
the ideal sex aid. So why - once he discovers that he has no
ability as a pilot, it costs a fortune and its maddening
unreliability loses him the one girl he really wants - does he get
more and more hooked? As he monitors the changes to the others in
the syndicate; as he learns that there is a literal down-side to
cheating in flying exams, shunning responsibility and pretending to
know stuff you don't, the question keeps on surfacing. Why? As the
misadventures mount - accidents, tussles with Tornadoes, arrest by
the RAF - he keeps thinking he's worked it out. But it isn't until
The Crash, in which he nearly kills himself and Dan (taking a
short-cut in the Round Britain race) that the penny finally
drops.... Flying is the antidote to modern life he didn't even know
he needed. It's the supreme way to feel real.
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