Now you have to be a certain age to remember the airline, BEA, or its companion BOAC.
British European Airways was created in 1946, and served Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and was also the largest domestic carrier while British Overseas Airways Corporation, flew services to the rest of the world.
All of which is a lead into the Eagle Book of Aircraft written by John W.R. Taylor in 1953 which in three sections and 170 pages told the story of flight from the earliest attempts to what passed for state-of-the-art aircraft in the early 1950s.
The book was part of the Eagle series, released at Christmas, and sat alongside the Eagle Annual, and other specials featuring characters from the Eagle comic.
I was too young to be given the book as a present, and within a few years if I had been asked to choose between its successor, or others which included Ships and Boats, or Police and Detection, I would always have gone for the Eagle Annual.
So, a full 67 years after The Eagle Book of Aircraft was published I acquired a copy.
It is a little tired at the edges, but it remains a fascinating piece of history, because of course with the passage of over half a century that is what it has become.
Of course it can be read as a straight account of both civilian and military aeroplanes, but its real magic is capturing that world we have lost, when travelling by air was still very much the preserve of the rich, and when even relatively small firms could design, build and market aircraft.
And so for many of its readers the book will have exceled when it described in pictures and words the everyday work of BEA and BOAC, like the story of the flight from London to Brussels.
Back then it started with buying a ticket at the airline’s office, before boarding a bus to the airport, followed by checking in the luggage, passport control, “light refreshment – all part of the service”, and the arrival at Brussels.
In one sense there is nothing odd, about the details of the trip, other than that few people in 1953 would have experienced such a flight.
Indeed, I would be 31 before I took my first flight and dad who spent his entire working career driving across mainland Europe would be 59 before he took his one and only trip in the air.
So, that is it. I shall go off and read some more from 1953, and in particular look closely at the cutaway pictures of aircraft, each of which offered up detailed descriptions of the parts of the plane. These were a feature of the Eagle comic, and proved very popular.
Pictures;, all taken from the Eagle Book of Aircraft, 1953
* Eagle Book of Aircraft, 1953, John W.R. Taylor
All of which is a lead into the Eagle Book of Aircraft written by John W.R. Taylor in 1953 which in three sections and 170 pages told the story of flight from the earliest attempts to what passed for state-of-the-art aircraft in the early 1950s.
So, a full 67 years after The Eagle Book of Aircraft was published I acquired a copy.
It is a little tired at the edges, but it remains a fascinating piece of history, because of course with the passage of over half a century that is what it has become.
Of course it can be read as a straight account of both civilian and military aeroplanes, but its real magic is capturing that world we have lost, when travelling by air was still very much the preserve of the rich, and when even relatively small firms could design, build and market aircraft.
And so for many of its readers the book will have exceled when it described in pictures and words the everyday work of BEA and BOAC, like the story of the flight from London to Brussels.
In one sense there is nothing odd, about the details of the trip, other than that few people in 1953 would have experienced such a flight.
Indeed, I would be 31 before I took my first flight and dad who spent his entire working career driving across mainland Europe would be 59 before he took his one and only trip in the air.
So, that is it. I shall go off and read some more from 1953, and in particular look closely at the cutaway pictures of aircraft, each of which offered up detailed descriptions of the parts of the plane. These were a feature of the Eagle comic, and proved very popular.
Pictures;, all taken from the Eagle Book of Aircraft, 1953
* Eagle Book of Aircraft, 1953, John W.R. Taylor
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