Would you?
It's the summer of 1935.((Late July or early August 1935, judging from the August Popular Flying on display. I can't quite make out the newspaper headlines but the themes (British troops? American naval policy?) could fit late July.)) You're at Croydon Airport, waiting to board an Imperial Airways flight to Paris. But you were in a rush this morning, and you forgot to bring something to read. According to your Bradshaw's it's a flight of 2 hours and 15 minutes, and you don't particularly want to spend it looking out the window at the ground, so far beneath your feet. No matter, Croydon is fully up to date and has a news kiosk in the booking hall. You wander over to peruse the selection on offer, and this is what you see:
The Daily Herald…
... and the Morning Post. The news is always bad these days, isn't it? There must be something a bit more relaxing to read, something diverting for the nervous flyer, perhaps. Let's look at the magazines, then:
OK, so that's not how I would have thought, had I existed in 1935 and been privileged enough to be taking an international flight, and probably not how the average reader of this blog would have thought, either. But my point is that the average airline passenger in 1935 would not have been as airminded as you or I, and would rather read anything other than Aeroplane, Flight, Popular Flying, or Aeropilot (which was a new one on me, actually; seems to have been edited by Francis Bradbrooke). Razzle is the only periodical on display, newspapers aside, which is not obviously devoted to aviation. (And it was somewhat risque for 1935, so not for everyone either!)
To flip the question around, even if the average passenger was in fact quite interested in catching up on the latest aviation developments since their last flight, wouldn't the concession holder also want to cater for those were less invested? (Railway platform bookstalls certainly did not sell only periodicals about railways, or even many at all, as far as I can tell.) But maybe the aeroplane spotters who came to watch rather than fly were the main customers. Maybe the photo was staged to perform airmindedness. Or maybe I (of all people!) am underestimating the degree to which people in 1935 wanted to learn immerse themselves in airmindedness.
What am I missing?
Image source: key.aero
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/.
Alan Simpson
That vertical rack appears to contain some Ordnance Survey aviation maps.
Adam
Hello! Stumbled across this blog after searching for "Aeropilot magazine". I have a copy of the one shown in the picture, it is dated July 1935, Vol 2 No 7.
I can't find much more about the magazine, and assume it to be rare?
Brett Holman
Post authorAlan:
You could well be right! There was even one with an aeroplane on the cover, though it doesn't quite seem to match the ones on display. But it's just the sort of thing that would be sold at an airport in this period, not least so interested passengers could follow their aircraft's course and locate any interesting landmarks as they trundled past.
Adam:
As I say in the post, I'd never heard of it, so yes, it seems safe to say it's pretty rare. Thanks for the issue information, that helps to confirm the photo's date too.