JOHN SIMPSON

The sun beat down hard as our little plane swung round from its parking place and trundled along the runway. These airstrips in the Namibian bush have no control towers; you’re on your own. The whole country seems empty. If you spot a house from the air, you crane down to look at it, wondering who on earth has settled here in the wilderness.

Our friend Rynand was at the controls, and my wife Dee was sitting beside him. I had opted to sit in the back with our two-year-old, Rafe: already an experienced traveller. He peered out excitedly, unsure what was happening. But as the ground slipped away below us he sank back into his seat with a grin. Now he knew. He was flying.

It’s in his blood… well, practically. A hundred years ago this month, the first powered flight in Britain was made. And Rafe’s great-great-grandfather, the boisterous, immensely brave American cowboy and showman Samuel Franklin Cody, made it. At Farnborough Hill in Hampshire, Cody’s Army Aeroplane No 1, a rickety construct of bamboo, canvas and leather, flew for 400 yards at a height of 20ft and a speed of 30 miles an hour. It stayed airborne for 27 seconds before crashing. Cody climbed out of the wreckage bleeding from a cut and grinning broadly.

We live in an age which is often more interested in discovering that great men and women have feet of clay, than in the deeds that have made them famous. Much devoted research has gone into proving that he wasn’t born when or where he said, that his name wasn’t really Cody (he borrowed that from Buffalo Bill), and that he eloped with Lela, my great-grandmother from Chelsea. He was already married. So was she, and she had children of her own whom she took with her when she ran off with him. My grandmother was one of them, so Rafe and I aren’t actually related to Cody by blood.

Sam Cody, as warm-hearted as he was adventurous, became a loving father to Lela’s children. They played a big part in his barnstorming circus performances. He would shoot the cigarette from Lela’s lips as she galloped in one direction round the ring and he in the other. Then he would shoot apples off the boys’ heads; they stood side by side while he rode away from them at full tilt, firing his two rifles backwards over his shoulders. (He aimed through rear-view mirrors mounted on his saddle.)

The children also acted every night in his famous melodrama, The Klondyke Nugget. At the height of the action, young Leon had to free himself from the stake that Cody, playing the villain, had tied him to. Then he would fling himself across the stage in order to rescue his mother, whom Cody had lashed to a barrel of explosive. The fuse was lit, and if Leon couldn’t untie her in time she would be blown up. At each performance, seconds after Lela had thrown herself to safety, the explosive would go off very loudly. It was all a long way from the quiet house off the King’s Road, which they had left behind.

These performances earned Cody the money to build his famous man-carrying kites, his airships Nulli Secundus I and II, and his first aeroplanes. Soon, though, he started winning the big prize money, which financed his exploits for the rest of his life.

Sadly, this wasn’t to be long. He died in 1913 when his latest plane broke up in the air. Sam Cody wasn’t a great engineer, and his planes weren’t always as advanced as those of his rivals. But he was a skilful inventor who could work his way through technical problems. And he was even braver than the other airmen of the time, who were all 20 years or more younger than him. He won his races through grit and determination.

The tabloid newspapers, which haven’t changed much, disliked Cody because he was an American showman, rather than a gentleman adventurer like his rivals. (The rivals, by contrast, admired the old boy greatly, and knew him as Papa Cody.) Even after he had become a British citizen, and the Prince of Wales had addressed him with respect as Colonel Cody, the press still crowed every time he came a cropper.

In 1909 he set a new world altitude record, and the Royal Aeronautical Society gave him its silver medal. Awarding it, his friend Colonel Capper, the father of British flying, said of the press campaign against Cody, ‘A man of less energy would have taken it to heart and chucked up the sponge.’ Cody replied: ‘I, and the men of my family before me, have been very determined people.’

Neither Rafe nor I can boast that we are fully men of his family. But in spite of all the dirt digging about his past, I’m really proud of the old boy. His achievements are undeniable; chief among them being, of course, the fact that exactly a century ago, he was the first man to fly in Britain.

So here we are, up in the stunningly clear skies over the Namibian desert, looking down at the wrecked ships along the Skeleton Coast. Rafe is gazing out through the Perspex with a look of sheer enjoyment on his face. I lean over and sing him a song which my father sang to me in the distant past:

I’m an airman, I’m an airman,

And I fly, fly, fly, fly, fly,

Up in the sky,

Ever so high.

The birdies cannot catch me,

No matter how they try.

I’m an airman, I’m an airman,

And I fly, fly, fly, fly, fly.

He grins at me. Who knows? Perhaps he’ll be a pilot – one day. Even if it isn’t quite in his blood.

John Simpson is the BBC’s world affairs editor and can be seen around the globe on the BBC World news channel. BBC World is available in 200 countries and territories worldwide and on selected British Airways flights.