I've added another biography to the sidebar, that of devil-may-care flying fool Claude Grahame-White. He is probably most remembered today for his daring night flight in 1910 while attempting to win the Daily Mail London to Manchester prize. (His film career seems to have attracted somewhat less attention.) But for me Grahame-White's main significance is as an airpower propagandist and as one of the originators, along with his co-author Harry Harper, of the knock-out blow theory.

Note the snub to British aeronautics: he was a member of the Aero Club of America in 1937, but not the Royal Aero Club!

I've finally gotten around to adding Montagu of Beaulieu (pronounced 'Bewley', apparently) to my irregular series of biographies of airpower propagandists. He's an important, but somewhat neglected figure, some of whose papers I've examined (those held at King's College London). He helped found the Air League of the British Empire in 1909, and devised the influential 'nerve centre' theory, which argued that the destruction of critical infrastructure would be one of the chief dangers of aerial bombardment in the next war:

an attempt would certainly be made to paralyse the heart of the nation by attacking certain nerve centres in London, the destruction of which would impede or entirely destroy the means of communication by telephone, telegraph, rail, and road.

Later, in 1916, he stumped across the country giving speeches criticising the government for its failure to expand aircraft production sufficiently, and to call for the formation of an independent air force, the Imperial Air Service. He was a Conservative MP, then a Conservative peer, and all the time very wealthy (if you call 10,000 acres wealthy, anyway).

But today I'm going to talk about Montagu's personal life, and the way it impinged on his public one. The photo above shows the 'Spirit of Ecstasy', the mascot adorning the bonnet of every Rolls-Royce -- every one since Montagu put an early version on his Silver Ghost in 1911, that is, for he was a huge motoring enthusiast, and had his friend, the sculptor Charles Sykes, design it for him. Supposedly, the model Sykes used was Montagu's own secretary and mistress, Eleanor Thornton. (Though there's an alternate, and possibly more convincing, theory minimising the role of Thornton and Montagu.)

Now, Thornton and Montagu's romance seems to have been a bit, well, romanticised, by a few of the webpages about the Spirit of Ecstasy. Wikipedia, for example, says that claims that their affair was secret because of Thornton's lowly social status, and that Montagu was forced by family pressure to marry a bit higher up the social scale (the daughter of a baron, as it happened). But I doubt this. I haven't been able to find out when they met, but everything points to the 1900s. (The earliest date I have seen mentioned in this connection is that Thornton became Montagu's secretary in 1902.) And the fact is that Montagu, born in 1866, married Cecil (yes, really) in 1889. Their two daughters were probably already born by the time he and Thornton met. So, enough of the star-crossed lovers/upstairs-downstairs/doomed romance cliches -- for his part, he was a rich, powerful man who could afford both a wife and family, and a mistress, and was never forced to choose between them. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the thought even crossed his mind.

But he did love her, and in the end, perhaps even felt ashamed of the choices she had been forced to make. On 30 December 1915, Montagu and Thornton were on board the S.S. Persia, sailing across the Mediterranean towards Port Said in Egypt, where he was due to leave her on his way to India. But the Persia was sunk off Crete by a German U-boat. He survived, but she did not. In Montagu's papers are some pretty clear, if restrained, expressions of grief at her loss. For example, in a letter to H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister, written in May 1916, he seems to be apologising for an overly emotional declaration of his desire to help the government on aviation matters, and at the end says that the Persia incident was the sort of thing that ended selfish aspirations. This could admittedly just mean his own personal brush with death, but there's more.

In Montagu's speeches around the country, he often mentioned the need to mobilise women for the war effort. In others, he referred to their role as mothers or lovers, such as one speech for the Navy League in April 1916. Here, he spoke of the sacrifices they made, meaning the men they had loved and lost. Then he says that he too has sacrificed, that this is driving him on his campaign for national aviation, for if he can rouse the country then his sacrifice and his deliverance won't have been for nothing. I think it's pretty clear that Montagu is referring to Thornton's death, and his own guilt at surviving.

Finally, in June 1916, Montagu gave a speech to the British Women's Patriotic League. Here he again spoke on the problem of airpower, and praised women workers, who have proven their right to a greater (but unspecified) part in government. But he's also worried about the falling birthrate. He pleads for a change in attitudes towards unmarried mothers, arguing that the shame of bearing a child out of wedlock is erased by the glory of bearing a child. When I first read this, I thought it just an interesting argument along eugenic lines (though Montagu was not talking about the upper classes being outbred by their social inferiors, but women workers). Now that I've read a bit more of the story of Eleanor and John, the real reason for this proposal has become clear. As my astute readers will no doubt have guessed, they had an illegitimate child together, a daughter named Joan. Whether or not the British Women's Patriotic League realised it, I think Montagu was attempting to make amends in some way for his part in his love's life and death. I don't think he ever publicly admitted his relationship with her; their daughter was placed with a foster family, although he did stay in her life as an 'uncle'. Montagu's wife, Cecil, died in 1919; he remarried the following year.

I wonder if he could ever bear to drive a Rolls again.

Image source: anataman.

I've put up a biographical blurb about H. G. Wells, celebrated author of Select Conversations with an Uncle and Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island. Wells is almost the Alpha and the Omega of my thesis, and perhaps the Kappa too -- at least in chronological terms: he wrote the first major novel in English on aerial warfare (The War in the Air); was banging on about the use of airpower as the basis of a world government almost until the day he died; and produced a couple of other airminded science fiction novels (The World Set Free and The Shape of Things to Come) and one film in between (Things to Come). His body of work is huge, but most of it little read today, outside of his most famous science fiction novels -- The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and perhaps The Island of Doctor Moreau. Actually, that's not quite fair: though his LibraryThing holdings are dominated by those works, many of his other novels have fairly respectable numbers for an author who produced his best work over a century ago.

His Who's Who entry has some noteworthy points. He clearly measured the worth of his public life by his publications -- no honours listed (except for his D.Lit.) or organisations joined (other than his clubs, and he was clearly very clubbable). Most of his works just get a publication date, a few get a terse explanatory note, e.g '(Sorbonne lecture)'. But interestingly, one, and only one, gets a longer description:

The Outline of History, first published in fortnightly parts and then in several book editions, 1920, is an attempt to reform history-teaching by replacing narrow nationalist by a general review of the human record

This seems odd to me, because The Outline of History was surely one of his better known works (certainly of his 1920s output), and it's still read today. So it doesn't seem particularly necessary to explain what it's about. Perhaps he viewed it as his most significant book? That several of his later books relate to it, or at least to allude to its title, might support this: Mr. Belloc Objects to the Outline of History, The Science of Life is 'a companion to The Outline of History' and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind is 'an Outline of Economic, Social and Political Science'. Also, I suspect that his future history, The Shape of Things to Come owes something of its form, at least, to The Outline of History, though I haven't actually read the latter yet so I can't be sure.

I find it amusing that such a world-famous figure would list his telephone number (Paddington 6204), not to mention his address (13 Hanover Terrace, Regents Park, N.W.1). Did he not get pestered by well-wishers, celebrity-seekers and out-and-out nutters? Maybe he had a secretary to answer the phone.

I've put up a biographical note on the jurist and civil servant J. M. Spaight, an important commentator on airpower issues from before the First World War until after the Second. I should have put this up long ago (Airminded gets quite a few search engine referrals from queries relating to Spaight, and there's not much on the web about him), but I wanted to read some of his books first, in order to get a better sense of the man -- he doesn't have as colourful a background as the other writers I have notes on.

A new biographical note on the right-wing aviator and politician Noel Pemberton Billing, who helped turn Britain's air defences (or lack thereof) into a burning political issue in 1916 and 1917.

A new biographical note is up, on the airman and writer P. R. C. Groves.

Inspired by my chance finding of a 1937 Who's Who in a secondhand bookshop, and desirous of putting it to use, from time to time I will write up brief biographical notes on people important to the history of airpower propaganda in Britain. The first of these is on L. E. O. Charlton.