Join author Midge Gilles at Mildenhall Library for a 90-year celebration of the Mildenhall to Melbourne Air Race! Midge will be talking about her biography on the adventures of aircraft pilot Amy Johnson.
Dr Midge Gilles is a highly experienced educator, having taught creative writing for more than 20 years at Cambridge University, as well as biography masterclasses for the University of East Anglia. She grew up in Suffolk, the only child of parents who had both left school at 14 but who kept their family history alive through tales of life in Prisoner of War camps, distant ancestors on the remote Scottish island of St Kilda and wayward relatives who lived double lives. Midge studied history at Cambridge University but realised she wasn’t interested in prime ministers and monarchs, preferring to find out about ordinary people.
In May 1930, Amy Johnson, a typist from Hull, took off from Croydon Airport with a thermos flask and a packet of sandwiches to try to beat the world solo record to Australia. She arrived, sun-blistered and with grease on her face, after weeks of flying a second-hand, open-cockpit biplane with no radio communication and the most basic of maps. Her adventures inspired a world struggling with the devastating effects of the Depression and made her into a celebrity overnight.
This event is free to attend but donations are welcome.
Author photo credit Rosa Kelly.
