The Truth About Ireland: Or, Through the Emerald Isle with an Aeroplane

In 1910, when most people had never seen an aeroplane, Alexander Corkey did something extraordinary: he climbed into a fragile wooden craft and flew over Ireland. This is the account of that journey, one of the earliest aerial travel narratives ever written, and it pulses with the giddy terror and wonder of a man discovering the world from an impossible height. Corkey introduces us to Mike Connor, the daring aviator who becomes his companion above the clouds, and together they venture where no traveler before them could go. From Blarney Castle to the lakes of Killarney, Corkey renders the Irish landscape in phrases that still carry the electricity of the unprecedented: he is seeing his homeland as no human eye had ever seen it before. Yet he is also afraid, candid about the wobbling doubts that accompany flight in an age when a mechanic's mistake might mean oblivion. The result is a charming, breathless document of transition, where ancient stone walls and modern machinery collide over green hills, and a nation reveals itself in bird's-eye silhouette.