African Adventures - A Life Lived Well - Beryl Markham.......

Beryl Markham (1902-1986)-English aviator, horse breeder, adventuress, and an aristocrat, born Beryl Clutterbuck, grew up in former British East Africa. Big Game Hunter Denys Finch Hatton had introduced her to the art of flying. She made the decision to fly and in her twenties she had learned the skills of flying in a D.H. Gypsy Mouth by Tom Black and earned her pilot's license. A bush pilot, definitely a sportswoman who had logged countless hours over the African savannah and jungle.

She got to become the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean - East to West - She departed in a single-engine Vega Gull named the "Messenger" from London, England and crash-landed in Novia Scotia in September, 1936.

She had a successful career of her own breeding, raising, and training racehorses and got to become one of the most socially prominent young women in British East Africa. 

"A horse is poetry in motion" - Hunting with Hounds.............

“There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”

- Sir Winston Churchill

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A lovely horse is always an experience.... It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.

~Beryl Markham

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Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride,

Friendship without envy,

Or beauty without vanity?

Here, where grace is served with muscle

And strength by gentleness confined

He serves without servility; he has fought without enmity.

There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent.

There is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.
All our history is in his industry.
We are his heirs, he our inheritance.

~Ronald Duncan, "The Horse," 1954

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“Very few people have settled entirely in the country but have grown at length weary of one another . . . the gentleman falls in love with his dogs and horses and out of love with everything else.” - Lady Montagu

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No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.

~Winston Churchill

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Hunting is our music,

It is our Poetry,

It is our Art,

It is our Pleasure

- Baroness Mallalieu

and in the Trophy Room........