The novel, a work of historical fiction, is set in colonial Kenya in the 1920s. It centers on the life story of Markham, who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.

Beryl Markham (née Clutterbuck; 26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986) was an English-born Kenyan aviator (one of the first bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America.

Traveling to Kenya, the author of “Circling the Sun” tells the story behind her bestselling historical novel about Beryl Markham, Isak Dinesen and the real “Out of Africa.”

At the heart of Circling the Sun is Markham’s tangled, explosively romantic liaison with the aristocratic big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton. We’ve encountered Hatton before, played by Robert Redford in the movie Out of Africa, based on the memoir of Baroness Karen Blixen, aka Isak Dinesen.

1920
Born Beryl Clutterbuck on October 26, 1902, in the English village of Ashwell, she had moved with her family to colonial British East Africa (Kenya from 1920) at the age of 4.

It’s no wonder Karen Blixen fell madly in love with Denys Finch Hatton in 1918. He was arrestingly handsome, intelligent, athletic and courageous. He was a war hero, a pilot and a lover of opera.

After her marriage, she became known as Baroness Blixen, and she used the title until her ex-husband remarried in 1929. The Karen Coffee Company was established by their uncle, Aage Westerholz, who chose the name after his daughter Karen, Blixen’s cousin, rather than to create an association with Karen Blixen.

On 5 April 1918, Bror and Karen were introduced at the Muthaiga Club to the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton (1887–1931). Soon afterwards he was assigned to military service in Egypt. By 1919, the marriage had run into difficulties, causing her husband to request a divorce in 1920.

Denys George Finch Hatton (24 April 1887 – 14 May 1931) was an English aristocratic big-game hunter and the lover of Baroness Karen Blixen (also known by her pen name, Isak Dinesen), a Danish noblewoman who wrote about him in her autobiographical book Out of Africa, first published in 1937.

Upon combustion, jet fuel produces water vapor along with oxides of carbon, oxides of sulfur, and oxides of nitrogen. Sulfates and nitrates act as nuclei for subsequent cloud droplet growth which ultimately form in contrail particles.

The net effect of contrails is therefore typically one of warming. With the projected increase in air-traffic, the contrail coverage is expected to increase with a corresponding increase in warming. What are the ingredients of jet fuel, and are they necessary for the formation of contrails?

Wingtip vortices (Img. 5) are often thought to be a type of contrail but are actually produced from a different process. During very specific weather conditions you may see vapor trails form at the rear of the wingtips of jet aircraft on takeoff or landing.

Contrails were initially discovered during the first high-altitude flights in the 1920s, although scientists and engineers were not overly concerned with them until WWII, when military bombers could be seen from miles away due to the long lines of contrails left in their wake.