Cecil Lewis

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Cecil Arthur Lewis (born March 29, 1898 in Birkenhead , † January 27, 1997 in London ) was a British pilot , fighter pilot in World War I , author, co-founder of the BBC and Oscar winner .

Live and act

In 1915, Lewis joined the British Royal Flying Corps at the age of 17 . He later admitted that he had declared his age too high at the time. Lewis fought in the Battle of the Somme , came into contact with the " Red Baron ", was celebrated as a war hero and in 1916 was awarded the Military Cross. Lewis later describes the aerial warfare in his memoir Sagittarius Rising (1936), which is still in print in the UK today. The book was made into a film in 1976 under the title Aces High (Eng .: Battle in the Clouds ). His books Sagittarius Surviving , All My Yesterdays , Farewell to Wings and Gemini to Joburg also deal with this topic.

After the end of the First World War , Lewis worked as a pilot in public air transport and later went to China to give flying lessons there. There he met his future wife and mother of two children, Doushka Horvath (1902-2005), the daughter of a Russian general. After the flight project in China ended, Lewis returned to Great Britain. In 1922 he was one of the four founders of the BBC and worked there for four years alongside the station's first general manager, John Reith . During his time at the BBC, Lewis met George Bernard Shaw , with whom he eventually wrote the screenplay for Pygmalion: The Novel of a Flower Girl , which won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay in 1938.

During World War II , Lewis rejoined the Royal Air Force teaching young soldiers to fly.

After the end of the Second World War, Lewis left the devastated London and lived as a sheep farmer in South Africa, which he also goes into in his biography All my Yesterdays . The lack of success of the farm made Lewis return to England in 1950. There he first worked for private television before moving to the Daily Mail in 1956 .

A decade later, Lewis retired to the Greek island of Corfu , where he lived until shortly before his death. Cecil Lewis was active as a book author well into old age.

Works (selection)

  • Sagittarius Rising . Heinemann, London 1983, ISBN 0-432-08600-5 (EA New York 1936)
  • Pathfinders . Morrow, New York 1944.
  • Yesterday's evening . P. Davies Press, London 1946.
  • Farewell to Wings . Temple Press Books, London 1964 (illustrated by Leonhard Bridgman)
  • Turn right for Corfu . Hutchinson, London 1972, ISBN 0-09-110550-1 (illustrated by David Knight)
  • Never look back. An attempt on autobiography . Hutchinson, London 1974, ISBN 0-09-117890-8 .
  • A way to be . London 1977.
  • Gemini to Joburg . Penguin, Harmondsworth 1984, ISBN 0-14-007363-9 .
  • Sagittarius Surviving . Cooper Books, London 1991, ISBN 0-85052-448-2 .
  • All my Yesterdays. An autobiography . Element Books, Shaftesbury 1993, ISBN 1-85230-405-7 .
  • So Long Ago, So Far Away. A memory of old Beijing . Luzac Oriental Books, London 1998, ISBN 1-898942-11-0 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lewis, Cecil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lewis, Cecil Arthur (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British pilot and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Birkenhead
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1997
Place of death London