Adds A LOT to "West with the Night". Beryl was a charmer, but what an unprincipled person in many ways. Interesting ( )

I wanted to be Beryl. Thoroughly entrancing biography. ( )

I was inspired to read this biography after I read Markham's autobiography "West With the Night." I wanted read an unbiased opinion about this very interesting woman. This biography cleared up many of the questions about Markham that rose from the earlier book. It was a biography with no frills that explained, with documentation, Markham's life. The subject of the biography lived an exciting life. The biography is a straight forward biography - just the facts, that acted as a counterpoint to the very visceral experience of reading "West With the Night." I recommend reading the two books as a together they give the reader the facts and the flavor of Markham's life. ( )

Beryl Markham, like Karen Blixen, could only have come out of Africa. Pioneering aviatrix, flamboyant beauty, brilliant race-horse trainer, unscrupulous seducer - her life story is for every reader who was enthralled by Blixen's exotic world, that of Kenya between the wars. Beryl Markham was the first person (man or woman) to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west (the hard way).

This fully authorized biography, drawn from the author's personal association with Beryl and her family, paints a vivid portrait of a tempestuous and controversial character. It tells of her friendship with Karen Blixen (though she commandeered Blixen's husband Bror and lover Denys Finch Hatton), of her spectacular courage when she became the first person to fly from England to America, and of the mysteries surrounding her highly praised, bestselling book WEST WITH THE NIGHT.
On 4 September 1936, she took off from Abingdon, England. After a 20-hour flight, her Vega Gull, The Messenger, suffered fuel starvation due to icing of the fuel tank vents, and she crash-landed at Baleine Cove on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. She became the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop from east to west. She was celebrated as an aviation pioneer.

In this comprehensive biography, Mary S. Lovell details the life of Beryl Markham from her birth in England and move with her parents to Kenya to her death in 1986 just before the book was published.

Lovell draws primarily on interviews with Beryl herself and family & friends. The result is a sympathetic portrayal of a woman who didn't always play by society's rules, had multiple tumultuous or tragic relationships, and was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west (the hard way). The book has a gossipy feel, partially because interviews were such a major source of information and partially because expatriates in Kenya were a close knit and gossipy bunch. Lovell tries her best to separate fact from rumor, and it makes for entertaining reading. ( )