“I am an ordinary woman who did extraordinary things. The first to qualify as a ground engineer. The first to fly to Australia single-handed. A million people lined the streets of London when I came home. I waved to them from an open-topped car like the queen, the queen of the air.”

“That my life has come down to this – luck, is galling, when I have always directed my own fate. Land or water? Heads or tails? Life or death? We’ll see.”

“Your home is within you, you carry your place in the world.”

“Freya, I killed a man.”

“Change is the one sure thing in life”

“Every flight is a gamble. If we don’t smash into a cloud bound hillside, we might be picked off like a defenceless lamb by a lone wolf Messerschmitt with a gaping maw painted on its fuselage.”

“The best thing about flying first class....was that you could be as nutty as a fruitcake and were still treated like the Queen of Sheba.”