Not the Red Baron - One Pilot's Love Story now in ebook format

Not the Red Baron is now available as an ebook published through
Smashwords. Distribution network includes major ebook
stores and libraries, including Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, FlipKart, Oyster,
Scribd, OverDrive and Baker & Taylor Axis 360.

Formats include: EPub, Mobipocket (Kindle), Palm Doc (PDB), PDF, LRF, RTF, Plain Text and HTML SmashReader with more options becoming available.

Retitled to 'Not the Red Baron - One Pilot's Love Story', the biography of Great Britain's only full time civilian display pilot of the late twentieth century, Robin Bowes, is a story about the human condition - hope, aspiration, love and loss.

Dedicated to all those who fly to entertain others, and to everyone who looks skyward at the sound of an aeroplane's engine. It will appeal to those who are fascinated by history, and those who like a good love story.

 

Tuesday 7th April: gave the first presentation of the year at Ermington Reading Rooms. Thank you to everyone who attended!

Robin was following in the traditions of the barnstormers of the inter war years and the remarkable Capt. Percy Phillips and his flying circus - The Cornwall Aviation Company Ltd. Photo: Eager passengers aboard an Avro 504K. Based in St Austell, Phillips toured the UK. 'Not the Red Baron' is available through Amazon Books.

Thank you to those of you who are buying the book through Amazon. Geoff will be giving a couple of talks this autumn where he'll be signing copies and showing Gordon Clarke's film of the triplane rebuild. The first talk will be for the Devon Strut (of which Robin was a member) at their monthly meeting at Kenn near Exeter in the Ley Arms, Thursday 9th October starting at 7:30 pm. And he'll be at Ermington Reading Room in late November - date and time to be finalised.

The completed biography: "Not the Red Baron" is available on Amazon at £9.99 in paperback only from April 2014.

Winter

Winter was the time for preparing the triplane for the new season and corresponding with events organisers across the UK, Ireland and the Continent. If there was no work to be done on the triplane, it would be stored with a museum such as the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton in Somerset where it would make up part of a World War One display.

The D H Lawrence connection

Robin and business partner Pat Crawford first saw the triplane in a hangar at Land's End airport, where it was in the capable hands of Viv Bellamy who'd originally built it. He was selling it on behalf of the owners.
How odd to find a replica of the Red Baron's triplane in the most remote edge of Southern Britain. However, this wasn't the first time that the area had had a connection with von Richthofen or at least, his family.
His cousin, Frieda von Richthofen, married the controversial author D. H. Lawrence, and in 1914 the couple were resident in Zennor just as The Kaiser's War - as it was known then - was getting underway. The Red Baron had not made his name at that early time, but the Lawrence's were certainly viewed with suspicion and not made welcome. Rumours were rife that Frieda was going to the cliffs to signal German U-boats.
They were eventually forced from their Zennor home and had to leave the UK. Lawrence in particular, never forgot the attitudes of the locals in Zennor, and included some incidents in his later work.