This Flight Tonight

Date: May 27
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Where: Theatre

On the 15th of June 1919, a Sunday morning, the greatest flight of all time came to an end when Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown landed their Vickers Atlantic Vimy close to the Marconi Transmitting Station a few miles beyond Clifden, Ireland. The poet Tony Curtis, in poems, stories and flights-of-fancy, tells the heroic tale. In March 1919, a chance meeting at the Vickers factory in Weybridge, Surrey brought together Alcock and Brown. Alcock, the veteran long-range bomber pilot; Brown, the electrical engineer with an extensive, but untested, knowledge of aerial navigation. Aviator and soldier, two brave souls ready to take on Lord Northcliffe's Daily Mail challenge: the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to Ireland. The prize: the glory, the honour, and ten thousand pounds. Tony Curtis was born in Dublin in 1955. He studied Literature at Essex University and Trinity College Dublin. An award-winning poet, Curtis has published ten warmly received collections. He has read his poetry all over the world to great acclaim. In May of this year, his latest book This Flight Tonight - a book that celebrates the lives of Alcock & Brown and their incredible flight from a field in St. John's, Newfoundland, to a bog in the west of Ireland in June 1919.