Few people today have ever heard of the Australian aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith. Yet during the brief thirty-eight years of his life between 1897 and 1935 he was one of the most celebrated public idols in history, becoming for a few years in the late '20s and early '30s a legend across the world for his brilliance as a pilot and his charismatic style among the pioneers of long-distance flying. He was the first to fly an aircraft across the Pacific from America to Australia (in 1928) and broke many solo flying records, and this brought him a status greater than any modern astronaut - a crowd of 300,000 greeted him in Sydney. But the price of his heroism was high and the demands for celebrity and a messy private life ended in tragedy off the coast of Burma in 1935 in an attempt to fly from England to Australia. Ian Mackersey's masterly portrait complements his outstanding biography.
