Speaker Secretary Ian Rutter reports:
Our speaker for October will be David Skillen. Members will remember that, last year, David, (and co-driver, his wife, Lynn), came from Belper in Derbyshire to give us a presentation about The Gettysburg Address. They are repeating the journey this year, when David will talk to us about ‘Giants in the Sky’, the Zeppelins in World War One.
During the 35 years that he spent in the Civil Service, David ran training programmes on public speaking and regularly addressed audiences ranging from five to five hundred people. Since retiring five years ago, he has travelled extensively across the UK giving fully illustrated talks to a variety of groups such as Probus, W.I., U3A and the National Trust.
In the night skies above Britain in 1915, people saw huge, silver, cigar-shaped objects flying across the country seemingly at will – the Zeppelins. It was the start of the first strategic bombing campaign in history. In the talk, we will look at the Zeppelin and David will tell us how they were built and flown and how the Royal Navy and the Royal Flying Corps, (later the RAF), defended Britain against them. Also, with the aid of copious illustrations, we will learn how the Zeppelin developed and find out about the men who trusted their lives to these majestic, yet incredibly dangerous, machines.
It promises to be an entertaining and enlightening presentation about a fascinating piece of historical warfare.