The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt. Mary Russell

she encountered her final limits when her plane disappeared mysteriously in 1937 during her attempt to become the first woman to fly round the world.

      In the year that Amelia Earhart agonized over her decision to enter the ‘attractive cage’ of marriage, a very different young woman set out to make another famous solo flight.

      Born in Hull in 1903 – an auspicious year for a flier – Amy Johnson was five years younger than her American counterpart. After taking an Arts degree from Sheffield University she found life in the north of England unexciting and moved to London where she took a job in the silks department of a large store, earning £5 a week. Amy Johnson’s life till then had been taken up with the ephemera of the 1920s: jazz, college rags and a love affair that lasted through her twenties. Despite the three hundred love letters – skittish and innocently provocative – which she wrote during that time, the affair ended dismally; by then, however, she had discovered another passion: flying.