E. T. BUSK. By Mary Busk. (John Murray. 7s. 6d.)
AFTER the War there was a plethora of short memoirs, fitted
only for private circulation. Mrs. Busk has let several years pass before writing this little biography of her son Edward Busk. In a sense it might be said to be somewhat belated, but it is so well done as to have a very real value, and it will deservedly attract more attention than it could have attracted when the crowd of such books was greater. Edward Busk is
described by a great authority on aeronautics as " The —pioneer of experimental flying. He was the first flyer to apply
scientific methods to the investigation of the behaviour of an aeroplane in flight, and his experiments in the air revealed far more about the actual conditions of flight than all the theoret- ical treatises written before or since." The charm of this memoir, however, does not depend upon what he did, but upon the picture which his mother makes real of his personality. She has the skill to arouse in those readers to whom her son is but a name, an instinctive regret that they cannot count themselves among his friends.
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