The Free Life  The Spirit of Courage, Folly and Obsession by Smith. Anthony,

Hard back book with colour pictorial cover, 319 pages, 19 chapters illustrated with B/W plates ending with postscript and appendix listing 28 attempts to cross the Atlantic by balloon.

Pamela Brown and Rod Anderson were a visionary American couple who conceived of and nurtured the idea of a daring balloon flight across the Atlantic. Malcolm Brighton, their pilot, was a blond Englishman with a pioneer dash and swagger. The flight of The Free Life would be his 100th ascent.

Anthony Smith asks why humans follow such improbable impulses in all sorts of explorations.  His own appetites for adventure-including a motorcycle trip through Africa and ballooning across the Alps-have put him at the receiving end of innumerable mishaps.

He weaves his thoughts about endeavour around the doomed 1970 flight of The Free Life from East Hampton, New York-a symbol of the end of an era and of the human longing for the unknown