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| Front Cover and signature |
This week we have a guest post from space and SF geek Simon Guerrier:
Amid the books and papers in the archives of the Croydon Airport Society is “Soviet Man in Space”, published in May 1961. The cover boasts a simple illustration of a man in a spacesuit gazing through a porthole at the pale blue Earth. Except someone has defaced the cover – there's something written in black ink over Europe and north Africa. It's the autograph of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
Amid the books and papers in the archives of the Croydon Airport Society is “Soviet Man in Space”, published in May 1961. The cover boasts a simple illustration of a man in a spacesuit gazing through a porthole at the pale blue Earth. Except someone has defaced the cover – there's something written in black ink over Europe and north Africa. It's the autograph of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
We don't know how this prized
autograph was obtained. Gagarin visited the UK in July 1961 but he
flew in to and out from Heathrow. The handwritten archive number CAS
521/99/003, written inside the booklet, tells us that
it
was bought in 1991 from the estate of Group Captain Patrick Tweedie
(1902-90). Tweedie was vice-president of the Croydon Airport Society when
it was formed in 1978 and had a long career in aviation in the RAF, Imperial Airways and as an Inspector of Air Accidents. He was Chief Inspector of Civil Aviation 1953 - 1962, so perhaps he met Gagarin on his UK visit. There will be more about the fascinating life
of Captain Tweedie in a forthcoming post, but we don't know how
he acquired this signed copy of “Soviet Man in Space”. (If you
can tell us, please get in touch.)
