Beryl Markham was a British-born Kenyan aviatrix, adventurer, and racehorse trainer. During the pioneer days of aviation, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. She is the author of the memoir West with the Night.
When Beryl was four years old, her father moved the family to Kenya, which was then British East Africa, purchasing a farm in Njoro near the Great Rift Valley. She spent an adventurous childhood learning, playing and hunting with the natives.
Beryl is not as well know as Danish writer Karen Blixen, whom Beryl befriended 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, Markham started an affair with him herself.
Largely inspired by the British pilot Tom Campbell Black, with whom she had a long-term affair, she took up flying. She worked for some time as a bush pilot. She also mingled with the notorious Happy Valley set, but was never a full-fledged "member" of that decadent crowd.
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