Unbound by Sky or Society

<p><strong>Lilian Bland was not meant to fly.</strong></p><p>Born into the gilded cage of the Anglo-Irish gentry she was expected to embrace marriage and drawing-rooms. Instead Lilian Bland chose trousers over crinolines a motorbike over a carriage and professional ambition over propriety. She traded the stifling world of Victorian aristocracy for the bohemian freedom of London.</p><p>This definitive biography chronicles the three astonishing acts of a woman who rejected every prescribed limit:</p><p>First her years as a <strong>self-sufficient journalist and photographer</strong> on Fleet Street where she earned the capital to fund her eccentric passions. Second the technical triumph that made her <strong>Ireland's first female aviator</strong> detailing how she built modified and flew her infamous home-made biplane the <em>Mayfly</em>. Finally her final radical reinvention as a resolute homesteader abandoning the limelight to manage a challenging ranch on the remote Canadian frontier.</p><p>More than a pioneer of flight Bland was an <strong>Unstoppable Force</strong>-a woman of enduring adaptable competence who literally built her own future. This is the history of a life lived without apology where the conquest of the sky was only the beginning of a lifelong experiment in absolute freedom. Approx.154 pages 24100 word count</p>