Manfred Curry (1899–1953)

This marvelously beautiful book owes its value and its Interest largely to Its hundred full-page plates - the volume is of quarto size — illustrating the thrilling beauties of aircraft and gliders In flight and of the views they afford of the earth beneath and the heavens around. Dr. Curry's book discovers a world of vast solitudes and strange perspectives, of breathless speeds or slow- moving, mighty panoramas. Its 100 photographs, by German. Swiss, French, English and American artists, reveal a ceaselessly changing skyscape of miraculous cloud-formations, storm-curtains and sunsets. In an introductory chapter relating to “cloudland,” Dr. Curry combines scientific data relating to cloud form with the beauties of flying.… (more)

Gone are the amiable old days when a skipper of a racing yacht thought chiefly of sailing his own vessel as fast as possible round the course while keeping out of the way of his opponents. Racing, now, is grown ruthless, pugnacious, and extremely scientific. ... Modern yacht-racing, in which mere sailing is of less importance than the harassing of opponents, offers as many opportunities for testing tempers as are offered by contract bridge. Dr Curry illustrates about a hundred problems of attack and defence, and gives reasoned answers to them. ... and at the end of the book is an awe-imwspiring page giving a record of his own successes during the last ten years. No author writing on such a subject could have better credentials.

[Arthur Ransome in The Manchester Guardian, 13 July 1932; reproduced in Christina Hardyment, Ransome on blue water sailing, p. 65].… (more)