'It is better than games'

 Peter Scott – ornithologist, conservationist, painter of waterfowl, naval officer, Olympic yachtsman, broadcaster, author, intrepid glider, que sais-j' encore – was born on this day in 1909. He was the son of the ill-fated Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his sculptress wife Kathleen (both vividly portrayed in Beryl Bainbridge's The Birthday Boys, which I recently reread). Peter was only two years old when his father met his end in the icy wastes of the Antarctic. In his last letter to his wife, Scott gave her some sound advice: 'Make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than games.'  As it was, Peter inherited his mother's artistic talent, becoming an accomplished bird painter, and his father's derring-do and love of vigorous outdoor action, if not of games as such. He took up cruising while at Cambridge (where he graduated in history of art), along with wildfowling, ice skating and other such pursuits. I described him above as an 'intrepid glider', and that is no exaggeration. Here is a hair-raising account of a flight he took on the 1st of July 1957, as related on this very blog 16 years ago (yes, it's been going that long)...

'Peter Scott, the naturalist and (subsequently) gliding champion, was up in his glider when he spotted a promising cumulo-nimbus thundercloud, and decided to have a crack at getting his Gold height badge. This is the kind of cloud that pilots avoid at all costs – but not the more intrepid members of the gliding fraternity. Scott plunged into the side of the cloud and, amid hail and ice, found himself being bounced about violently at 20ft per second as the altimeter raced to 11,000ft. An ascent of 700ft in about 30 seconds was promptly followed by a violent hurtle downwards, then up again for another 700ft, with full air brakes out and 80mph on the clock. Another almighty jerk, down again, then finally out of the cloud. Trying to shut the air brakes, Scott discovered that they were frozen open. On landing, he was pleased to note that he had indeed climbed to Gold height.' 
Phew.
  Scott's first wife was the novelist-to-be Elizabeth Jane Howard, who was 19 (to Scott's 33) when they married in 1942. She left him four years later, and, after various literary dalliances and another short-lived marriage, got together with Kingsley Amis, who became her third husband, and whom she managed to put up with for 18 years.