Olley Air Services and Geoffrey Keating

Captain Gordon P. Olley seated at his desk

The photograph to the right was taken by Geoffrey Keating, staff photographer for The Daily Sketch, in 1937. The Society's archive include a letter from Keating accompanying the photographs to Captain Gordon P. Olley. They were commissioned to promote Olley's new airline Olley Air Services shortly after it began business. The photographs below give a wonderful view of air travel in the 1930s and, among other things, passengers on a Olley Air Services' plane; a passenger being weighed at check in; Captain J.F.D. Scott reading the weather; a pilot preparing for take off; the Misses Boakes (sisters) cleaning the plane.

Flying to the Past: Croydon to Persepolis - New Event Announcement

Olley Expedition Photograph,
Persepolis (Croydon Airport Society)

If any of you enjoyed the blog on Aerial Photographs of the Middle East in the 1930s, you can come and find out more at an event on Saturday 26 September where the film the flight was made for will be screened.

The ancient past meets modernism with a juxtaposition of 1930s aerial photography, film, archaeology, celebrity pilots and archaeologists. Come to Croydon Airport to find out more about lost empires and the people who recorded their excavation.

Aerial Photographs of the Middle East in the 1930s

The expedition team from the Oriental Institute in Chicago.
Olley expedition photographs, Croydon Airport Society

One of the best aspects of working in archives and with museum collections is the unexpected things you can find. Peter Skinner, archivist for the Croydon Airport Society, knowing my interest in archaeology and the Middle East pointed me to some photographs in a file named 'Expeditions'. I was amazed to find photographs of excavations at Khorsabad and Persepolis as well as a number of aerial photographs of the area of (to use the names used then) Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Persia from 1932 or 1933.