22 Facts About Beryl Markham

Beryl Markham was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America.

Beryl Markham wrote about her adventures in her memoir, West with the Night.

Beryl Markham had an older brother, Richard Alexander "Dickie" Clutterbuck.

Beryl Markham built a horse racing farm in Njoro, near the Great Rift Valley between the Mau Escarpment and the Rongai Valley.

Beryl Markham spent an adventurous childhood learning, playing, and hunting with the local children of all races.

Beryl Markham befriended the Danish writer Karen Blixen during the years that Blixen was managing her family's coffee farm in the Ngong hills outside Nairobi.

When Blixen's romantic connection with the hunter and pilot Denys Finch Hatton was winding down, Beryl Markham started her own affair with him.

Beryl Markham invited her to tour game lands on what turned out to be his fatal flight, but Markham supposedly declined because of a premonition of her flight instructor, British pilot Tom Campbell Black.

Beryl Markham worked for some time as a bush pilot, spotting game animals from the air and signalling their locations to safaris on the ground.

Historian Jane Ridley notes that Beryl Markham "was spotted running barefoot along the corridors of Buckingham Palace".

Mansfield later threatened to divorce Beryl Markham and cite Harry as a co-respondent.

In 1936, Beryl Markham made a solo flight across the Atlantic, from England to North America.

Beryl Markham became the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop from east to west, and was celebrated as an aviation pioneer.

Beryl Markham chronicled many of her adventures in her memoir, West with the Night, published in 1942.

Beryl Markham's memoir lingered in obscurity until 1982, when California restaurateur George Gutekunst read a collection of Ernest Hemingway's letters, including one in which Hemingway praised Beryl Markham's writing:.

Beryl Markham has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer.

When found in Kenya by AP East Africa correspondent Barry Shlachter, Beryl Markham was living in poverty.

Beryl Markham had recently been badly beaten during a burglary at her house near the Nairobi racetrack, where she still trained thoroughbreds.

Critics raised questions as to whether Markham was the true, or sole author of West with the Night, when her third husband Raoul C Schumacher made claims to the book.

Evidence abounds that she was indeed the sole author; copies of the manuscripts sent to her editor prior to Beryl Markham meeting her ex-husband quickly silenced the critics and his claims.

Schumacher was lodging with Hollywood writer Allen Vincent in California according to the 1940 census and Beryl Markham re-entered the United States via Florida in 1941.

From her research, Lovell concluded that Beryl Markham was the sole author, although Schumacher made some basic edits to the manuscript.