A NEW biography on the woman who became the first pilot to fly an open-cockpit plane from Cape Town to London has revealed that she had strong Kerry connections.

For a five-year period from the mid-1920s, Limerickborn pilot Lady Mary Heath was one of the best-known women in the world. It was an era when everyone had gone aviation mad, due to the exploits of Charles Lindberg and, later, Amelia Earhart.

But Lady Heath made front-page news worldwide as the first pilot ever, male or female, to fly a small, opencockpit plane solo from Cape Town to London.

Back home in Ireland in the 1930s, she was reputed to have landed her plane on every flat field in the country and always made at least one annual visit to Ballybunion to see her Aunt Cis, the woman who had brought her up.

Later on in her life, to the joy of the locals in Ballybunion, she would land her plane in a place called Larkin’s Field, and, for a small fee, take the more intrepid spectators into theair for short spins. On one visit, local breeder Jim Clarke presented her with a greyhound.

Now Ashfield Press has published Lady Icarus, the first full-length biography of one of the truly great Irish women of the 20th century. Written by journalist Lindie Naughton, it tells the tale of a remarkable woman who truly flew too close to the sun, combining high adventure with considerable poignancy.

Never one to sit still for long, Lady Mary had already spent two years as a dispatch rider during the First World War, pioneered women’s athletics in Britain and helped introduce women’s track and field to the Olympics.

Along the way, she was to travel widely and marry three times, eventually returning with her third husband, a Trinidadian, to establish her own air company in north Dublin.

Most remarkably, the woman born Sophie Peirce Evans at Knockaderry, Co. Limerick achieved all this despite the most unpromising of beginnings. When she was just a toddler, her crazed father had murdered her mother and was put away for life after a sensational trial.

• Lady Icarus is published by Ashfield Press in hardback, price €25.