Piano Wire and Courage: Lady Carnarvon talks to Alexander Norman about Captain de Havilland's Moth and the golden age of aviation

Today, I welcomed author Alex Norman to the podcast to talk about his book on De Havilland’s Moth and the thrilling world of aviation in the 1920s and 30s, a period with such wonderful links to Highclere. 

Alex shared his own family’s connections to early flying, including his grandfather’s aircraft and involvement in the London Aeroplane Club and explained how Geoffrey de Havilland’s ingenuity helped by Frank Halford’s lightweight Cirrus engine made the DH60 Moth a breakthrough for private pilots.

 We explored how government-subsidised flying clubs, adventurous women and men and the freedom of the skies fuelled record-breaking journeys, from Lady Bailey and Amy Johnson to the Aga Khan Trophy winner Aspy Engineer. 

We ended with Alex’s dream dance partner: the remarkable aviator Beryl Markham.

00:56 The de Havilland Family Connection

04:33 Building the First Aeroplane

05:05 Post-War Aviation & The Birth of the Moth

11:35 The Private Flying Movement & Aeroplane Clubs

14:47 Women in Aviation & Record-Breaking Adventures

16:47 The Aga Khan Trophy & Aspi Engineer

21:03 The de Havilland Legacy & The Mosquito

21:59 Dream Party Guest: Beryl Markham

You can hear more episodes of Lady Carnarvon's Official Podcasts at https://www.ladycarnarvon.com/podcast/

New episodes are published on the first day of every month. 

Transcript

Episode: The Legend of Captain de Havilland’s Moth

Lady Carnarvon: Welcome to my podcast! Today, I’m sitting down for a bit of banter, fun, and a wonderful chat with the brilliant author Alex Norman. Alex has worn many hats in his life, but today he is here to talk about his book, Captain de Havilland’s Moth, and the extraordinary history surrounding aviation in the 1920s.

We share an amazing historical link with the de Havilland family right here at Highclere, so I couldn't wait to invite him on. Welcome, Alex! Thank you for being here.

Alex Norman: Thank you very much indeed for inviting me.

Lady Carnarvon: Can I ask you first of all—why did you choose this specific subject for your book?

Alex Norman: Funnily enough, much like yours, my family had a long-standing connection with the de Havillands. My grandfather was among the first forty people in this country to own a private airplane during the 1920s.

Lady Carnarvon: Wow!

Alex Norman: He learned to fly after the Great War and bought a war-surplus trainer called an Avro 504. He was an architect by profession, and he actually founded an airfield called Heston, which is better known today as the area just adjacent to London Heathrow!

Track boundaries aside, that might be a slight exaggeration—the boundaries of Heston were just beyond Heathrow, and Heston no longer exists, of course. But he set up an aviation company there called Airwork and was an active member of the London Aeroplane Club, which came into being in the mid-1920s. He was deeply involved in the early private flying movement and was very close friends with a gentleman named Alan Butler.

The story of how Alan Butler came to be the chairman of de Havilland is fascinating. It ties back to Geoffrey de Havilland, who grew up very close to here at Crux Easton, where his father was a clergyman.

Lady Carnarvon: And in fact, his father was Lord Carnarvon’s rector! So Geoffrey grew up there, absolutely fascinated by engineering, early cars, and automobiles. The 5th Earl of Carnarvon was one of the earliest automobile drivers in this country, and I think he actually passed on some of his old cars to young Geoffrey.

Geoffrey was completely captivated by early flight technology. When he was building his first plane with his engineer, they constructed it in a shooting hut borrowed from Moore-Brabazon at the foot of Beacon Hill. That was his original base. We still have some amazing photographs of it because Lord Carnarvon used to go down there and watch—he desperately wanted to go up in the plane as well!

In 1909 and 1910—which were the seminal years—he made his first flights. We actually celebrated the centenary 100 years later in 2010, when 100 Moth airplanes landed in the exact same field at Highclere to celebrate de Havilland and all his achievements. From that commemorative year onward, I began meeting so many marvelous men and women in their flying machines, which completely sparked my dive into the history of the de Havilland Moth and, later on, the Mosquito. It was my introduction to a whole raft of simply glorious pilots!

I interrupted you, though—so you're right, he started out right here at Crux Easton.

Alex Norman: Yes! As you probably know, Geoffrey de Havilland went on to become only the second person to successfully build and fly an airplane in this country. Remarkably, he designed it completely from scratch without any prior technical knowledge of aviation—he had never even seen an airplane fly before!

Lady Carnarvon: No, I know! It’s extraordinary. I’ve written all about that. The wings were sewn by his wife, and it was held together with piano wire and bicycle wheels. But it seems like every single early aviator was a bicycle maker—from the Wright brothers in America to Farman and Voisin. In fact, Voisin stayed here at Highclere as well! It’s fascinating, the give-and-take between them all. We have some very early photographs taken by Lord Carnarvon of the Farman and Voisin planes in France, where he would watch them take off.

It is truly extraordinary. I even have a photograph of the exact spot where he built the plane. We actually found his old spanners in the field, though the original shed is long gone. But they had great fun!

Alex Norman: Geoffrey de Havilland, having successfully built and flown his plane—and I say "successfully," though the first one crashed rather spectacularly, but luckily he wasn't badly hurt—managed to sell his second aircraft to the Ministry of War. He went on to have a highly successful wartime career designing and building aircraft for the war effort. In fact, by the end of World War I, de Havilland's designs were far and away the most successful in terms of production numbers across all British manufacturers.

After the war, everyone assumed that flying was going to be the next massive global phenomenon. The airplane had proven itself capable of flying to Berlin and back, and everyone knew aviation was the future. It was very much like the hype surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) today—everyone just knew it was the next big thing.

Except, of course, nobody had any money!

People like de Havilland, who had huge manufacturing facilities, found themselves stranded. He was actually working for a company owned by a man named Holt at the time. When the war ended, the government demand for airplanes abruptly stopped. Suddenly, instead of building aircraft, they were forced to manufacture things like garden furniture and miscellaneous items just to survive. Eventually, almost everyone had to be laid off.

However, de Havilland managed to salvage something from the wreckage. He decided to set up his own independent company using a small amount of his own money alongside whatever capital he could scrape together. He produced some of the very first commercial airliners to operate between London and Paris, securing an order from Daimler to design and build them.

Things were going reasonably well by 1922 and 1923, but his operations base just outside London—an aerodrome called Stag Lane—ran into trouble. When the proprietors of Stag Lane saw that de Havilland was doing well, they told him, "We’re actually going to have to sell the aerodrome. Unless you can buy it off us, we're afraid that's the end of your lease."

De Havilland was beside himself. He couldn't possibly raise the £10,000 asking price. It was at that exact moment that a young man named Alan S. Butler appeared on his doorstep. Butler was only twenty-three years old, incredibly wealthy, and he asked de Havilland if he could build him a custom airplane suitable for taking his young wife, Lois, on a touring holiday across Europe. He explicitly stated: "No expense to be spared."

De Havilland scratched his head and thought, “Right, we’ll dream up an incredibly high price. We’ll quote a number sufficient to buy the entire aerodrome and save the company. If this chap isn't a complete lunatic, he’ll turn it down, and that will be the end of it.”

But no! When de Havilland quoted him the staggering price of £3,000 to build the plane, Butler accepted it at once!

As a result, the company was saved, they bought Stag Lane Aerodrome, and the rest is history. Alan Butler became the chairman of de Havilland and remained so until he retired in the 1950s, by which time the company employed around 50,000 people worldwide. It became a colossal success story.

Lady Carnarvon: And of course, he also rented out planes at that time. Lady Carnarvon, the 5th Countess, actually rented a plane from him in 1923 to fly all the way down to Egypt to get to her husband’s side.

Alex Norman: Oh, that's incredibly interesting! Yes, I knew that the Duchess of Bedford did exactly the same thing—she hired an aircraft from de Havilland to undertake a lengthy "aerial voyage," as they were romanticized in those days.

It was a remarkable era that truly took off in 1925 with the birth of the DH.60 Moth series of aircraft. What de Havilland realized was that almost nobody—apart from ultra-wealthy individuals like Alan Butler—could afford to spend £3,000 on an airplane. The underlying issue was that the only available engines were wartime surpluses, which had been designed with zero consideration for fuel economy or production costs. They were wildly expensive to run.

De Havilland realized that the absolute key to unlocking light aviation was the design of a practical, lightweight engine. It needed to produce just enough power to carry two people safely for 300 to 500 miles at a cruising speed of about 75 miles per hour. No such engine existed on the market.

So, he took a wartime Renault V8 aero engine out of an old aircraft and plonked it down on a workbench. He had a brilliant young engineer working for him named Frank Halford. He looked at Halford and said, "Look, this Renault engine is a V8. What if you were to just take four of those cylinders, arrange them in a straight line, redesign the crankshaft, and turn it into an inline four-cylinder engine? Couldn't we do that?"

Halford scratched his head, thought it sounded a bit eccentric, but decided to give it a go. The short version of the story is that he came up with the legendary Cirrus engine. It completely shattered de Havilland’s expectations—producing 60 horsepower, weighing under 300 pounds, and serving as the bedrock around which de Havilland designed the Moth.

The Moth first flew in 1925 and became an overnight sensation because, for the first time, an airplane was genuinely within financial reach for private citizens. Of course, it wasn't truly affordable to farm or factory hands, but it changed the game for the rising middle class.

By 1925, the broader economy was beginning to bounce back. Industries like chemical manufacturing and the automotive sector were booming, and people finally had discretionary income. At £600, the Moth was still a serious investment—equivalent to about three times an average working man’s annual salary—but it was attainable for the professional class.

At the same time, the British government was actively trying to encourage private flying by subsidizing a network of Aero Clubs across the country—the London Aeroplane Club, the Leicestershire Aero Club, the Newcastle Aero Club, and so on. The strategic idea was to build a ready-made cohort of civilian pilots who could be instantly drawn into the Royal Air Force if the nation ever went back to war.

This government subsidy was the crucial turning point. It made flying accessible, and it sparked a massive cultural movement of young men—and, fascinatingly, a huge number of women—taking to the skies.

Lady Carnarvon: Yes! Comparatively, there were quite a few pioneering women who were determined to learn to fly. It became immensely fashionable.

Alex Norman: Exactly. The same sort of high-society young ladies who would typically be at the front of the pack during a fox hunt suddenly took to the air instead.

Lady Carnarvon: There was a whole evolutionary series of Moths that he developed, wasn't there?

Alex Norman: There was, yes. The very first model was the Cirrus Moth, named directly after its Frank Halford-designed Cirrus engine. The next iteration was the Gypsy Moth, which utilized the upgraded Gypsy engine. After that came a whole kaleidoscope of variations: the Puss Moth, the Leopard Moth, the Hornet Moth, and several others.

Lady Carnarvon: Where did the famous Tiger Moth come into the picture? Was that a bit later?

Alex Norman: Yes, the Tiger Moth was actually a later development, really coming into its own in the late 1930s.

Lady Carnarvon: We still have quite a few Tiger Moths flying around today. I often hear them overhead here at Highclere.

Alex Norman: Absolutely, and the reason so many survive is because the Tiger Moth became the official primary training aircraft for the Royal Air Force and the entire British Commonwealth during the Second World War. It was produced in massive numbers across Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

After the war, the great heyday of de Havilland's private aviation era drew to a close. The golden age of civilian flying was firmly rooted in the 1920s and 1930s.

Lady Carnarvon: Yes, roughly from 1924 to 1934 was that core window. By 1936, the world was already beginning that steady drumroll toward a very different, darker chapter in all of our lives.

Alex Norman: But the beautiful thing about that brief window was that anyone—regardless of whether they were high-born or low-born—could learn to fly if they could scrape together the money or get onto a government training scheme.

Furthermore, back then, there were virtually no regulations or "rules of the air." You could fly anywhere you wanted, at any altitude, in almost any weather, and land wherever you pleased! The Moth was exceptionally robust; it was often said that if a field was good enough for a flock of sheep, it was good enough to land a Moth.

Naturally, as soon as you give human beings that kind of freedom, they immediately want to push the boundaries to see exactly how far they can go. That desire for adventure gave rise to some truly mind-boggling long-distance flights. Take Lady Bailey, for example. She secretly learned to fly because she knew her husband wouldn't approve. Within just three weeks of getting her license, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Irish Sea—using a half-inflated motorcycle inner tube wrapped around her waist as an improvised life jacket!

She went on to set a world altitude record, took up competitive air racing, and placed third in her very first race. But even that wasn't enough adventure for her. She decided to fly her Moth all the way from England to South Africa to visit her husband, Abe, who was living in Cape Town.

It is completely mind-boggling when you look at how basic these aircraft were. I actually flew a 1920s DH.60 Moth for the first time last year. It is incredibly primitive. It weighs only a few hundred pounds, made entirely of doped linen, fabric, piano wire, and thin strips of wood. Yet, people were casually flying these fragile machines across the entire length of the African continent!

Then, of course, you have the famous Amy Johnson, who flew her Moth solo all the way to Sydney, Australia. It’s the modern equivalent of trying to drive a standard lawnmower or a tiny Citroën 2CV across the Sahara Desert. Today, we don't think twice about long-distance travel, but back then, they didn't even have aeronautical maps! Lady Bailey was literally navigating her way through Africa using a basic picture postcard she had cut out of a shipping brochure!

But my absolute favorite adventure from this era is the story of Aspi Engineer and the race for the Aga Khan Trophy in 1930.

The Aga Khan announced a grand prize for the first Indian national to successfully fly solo between London and Karachi (in either direction) in under a month. There were three main competitors. First was a young man named Man Mohan Singh, who was studying aeronautical engineering at Bristol University. Second was J.R.D. Tata (of the famous Tata industrial family). The third was a young Parsi teenager named Aspi Engineer.

Lady Carnarvon: Were they all flying in the same direction?

Alex Norman: No, interestingly enough! Two of them set off from Croydon Aerodrome heading east toward Karachi, while J.R.D. Tata flew from Karachi heading west toward London.

To cut a long story short, when they adjusted all the logs for official time, they discovered that Aspi Engineer had won the trophy! It was an astonishing achievement, made even more incredible by the fact that when he touched down victoriously in Karachi, he was still a few weeks shy of his 17th birthday!

Lady Carnarvon: Oh my goodness. I suppose that's the beautiful recklessness of youth—when you're that young, you aren't afraid of anything, so your courage is completely uninhibited.

Alex Norman: Exactly. And you won't be surprised to hear that Aspi Engineer went on to have a legendary military career, eventually becoming the Air Marshal of the Indian Air Force.

Lady Carnarvon: What extraordinary people they were. I sometimes wonder if that relentless drive came out of the profound grief and loss of the First World War. It feels like that generation was determined to live by Rudyard Kipling's words: to "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run." They just got on with it, creating an incredibly vibrant, exciting era.

Funnily enough, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon was a passionate motorist who desperately wanted to fly with de Havilland, but he suffered a catastrophic car crash in 1909. He had driven all the way from Highclere to Constantinople in a Belgian Metallurgique car, but on his return journey, he had a terrible accident that nearly killed him. He was back here recovering in September 1909 when de Havilland made his first unsuccessful flight attempt, and he watched him finally succeed the following year.

It’s hard to wrap your head around that era. You had to buy your petrol from local chemists, and your car boot was constantly packed with spare parts! Which was probably very sensible.

Alex Norman: It’s incredible how early on people began undertaking these highly ambitious journeys by car and plane. My great-grandfather was exactly the same. We have a wonderful article he wrote at home titled, "A Motoring Holiday in Morocco, 1908."

Lady Carnarvon: Oh my goodness! The roads must have been absolutely bone-shattering, not to mention the constant punctures.

Alex Norman: Yes! They literally had to hoist the cars onto basic wooden boats just to get across rivers because there were no bridges capable of holding an automobile.

Lady Carnarvon: How extraordinary. The history of early aviation is utterly captivating. Geoffrey de Havilland remains an absolute hero of mine. Later on, during the Second World War, he went against the standard judgment of the Air Ministry to design the Mosquito—an aircraft built almost entirely out of wood that could fly at 420 miles per hour, completely outrunning German fighters and outperforming standard steel bombers like the Lancaster. He was a visionary.

Alex, thank you so much for coming in today. We hold a summer party here at Highclere every year for our friends and supporters. If you were coming to a summer dance here and could bring absolutely anyone from history as your dream partner, who would it be?

Alex Norman: Goodness me, what a question! I think it would have to be Beryl Markham.

Beryl Markham was the extraordinary aviator who wrote West with the Night and became the first person to fly solo east-to-west across the Atlantic. The very last time I saw my grandmother, she asked me what I was reading, and I told her I was reading Beryl’s memoir.

My grandmother looked at me and said, "Ah, Beryl Markham. Yes. The last time I saw her, she was in the arms of the Prince of Wales, right under the wings of your grandfather's Puss Moth!"

It turned out to be at the London Aeroplane Club summer party in 1930! Beryl was an absolute femme fatale. She was simultaneously carrying on scandalous affairs with both the Prince of Wales and his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, while also seeing the famous hunter Denys Finch Hatton (celebrated in Out of Africa). It was famously whispered that her husband used to drive a copper nail into their bedroom door for every single high-society affair she had!

But scandals aside, she was a woman of mesmerizing talent, skill, and raw courage.

Lady Carnarvon: Well, you would certainly have an entertaining evening! Thank you so much, Alex, for sharing these brilliant stories.

To everyone listening, please go out and pick up a copy of Alex’s book, Captain de Havilland’s Moth, available on Amazon or at any good bookstore. It deserves a spot on your bookshelf—it’s a fantastic, fun look at the golden age of aviation.

Thank you, Alex.

Alex Norman: Thank you so much, Lady Carnarvon. That was wonderful fun.