Updated June 7th, 2025

Announcing the 100th Anniversary Edition of Leo Walmsley’s Flying and Sport in East Africa

My father Leo Walmsley wrote this book in 1920, about his exploits as an observer in a fragile biplane in WW1 in East Africa. It was his first full-length book, one that hasn't been reprinted in over a century, and almost impossible to find anywhere. Not any more.

Soon to be available from the Walmsley Society in the UK, and from Sean Walmsley in the US.

At the outbreak of World War 1, Leo Walmsley enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps and saw service in East Africa where he flew on reconnaisance missions as an observer in an open front cockpit, mapping army positions, and reporting back to Allied troops-in the fragile early aeroplanes of the time.
     His personal narrative captures, in his first full-length book, his inborn sense of how to tell a compelling story; his powers of observation that transport a reader to a place and time the reader has never known; his humour, both ironic and self-deprecating.     
     Readers will learn as much about the African landscape below the aircraft as the act of flying above it, with an almost equal balance of joys and perils. Leo delighted in the experience of flying and describing it, and revelled in the diversity of wildlife and vegetation.
     However, a lot could go wrong in the air-Leo had more than a dozen crashes-and the insects and heat were a constant source of illness on the ground.

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