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The Race To Dover

Logo for The Race To Dover

BBC cricket correspondent and keen pilot Jonathan Agnew tells the story of the competition held in July 1909 to become the first pilot to fly across the English Channel. Louis Bleriot, a 37-year-old engineer with a badly burned foot, took the prize offered by Lord Northcliffe, owner of the Daily Mail. Jonathan finds out what happened to the favourite, the young international playboy and sportsman Hubert Latham, and climbs into the cockpit of the first flying machine to make the crossing, the Bleriot XI.