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Loraine, Winifred

Robert Loraine, Soldier, Actor, Airman, [27] 59

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20100901114140 Trevor Fishlock on Winifred Loraine, Robert Loraine, Soldier, Actor, Airman

High Flyer

Trevor Fishlock on Winifred Loraine, Robert Loraine, Soldier, Actor, Airman

Robert Loraine was a magnificent man in a flying machine. I first encountered his story in an Anglesey meadow where he had two of his many crashes. Soon afterwards I chanced on a biography of him in a second-hand bookshop. Robert Loraine, Soldier, Actor, Airman was as wrecked as one of his flimsy aircraft. A restorer made it shelfworthy so that from time to time I can marvel at Loraine’s reckless courage. As a distinguished actor he had played d’Artagnan on the London stage and he seemed to stay in character when he swapped sword for joystick. ‘He had the soul of a poet,’ Jules Védrines, his French mechanic, observed, ‘and a poet does not make a reliable pilot.’

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