Beryl Markham

(1902 - 1986)

Born in England in 1902, Beryl Markham (née Clutterbuck) was raised in present-day Kenya, where she became at the age of eighteen the continent’s first professional female racehorse trainer; she went on to train six Kenya Derby winners. In 1936 she took off from London for New York City in a borrowed plane with no radio equipment. She safely crashed in Nova Scotia after more than twenty hours, becoming the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west. The Jockey Club of Kenya awarded Markham a bungalow at its racecourse in 1979.