Dear Marian,

I just can’t believe it! You have Lilian Bland and Lady Mary Bailey in your list of “Ireland’s Greatest Women” but neglect to include Lady Mary Heath (1896-1939), the greatest Irish female pilot of them all.

Here are some of the reasons why Lady Mary Heath must be considered in any list of great Irishwomen:

• In an era when few women played any sport that involved sweating, she was one of the founders of the Women’s Amateur Athletic Association in the UK and set world, UK and Irish records for the high jump and javelin, plus Irish records for the shot and discus that endured until the 1960s.
• She was a rare female graduate of the Royal College of Science (since absorbed into UCD), where she studied agriculture.
• As a representative to the International Olympic Council, she spoke frequently on women’s issues and paved the way for the integration of women’s athletics into the Olympic movement. Her book Athletics for Women and Girls, published in 1925, was the first of its kind.
• After learning to fly, she fought prejudice, ignorance and male bloody-mindededness to become the first woman in Britain or Ireland to obtain a commercial pilot’s licence, opening up the skies for thousands of other women (including Lady Bailey and another Irish pilot Sicele O’Brien)
• In 1928, she became the first person, male or female, to fly solo from Cape Town to London.
• She was the first British or Irish woman to parachute from a plane.
• She set a number of altitude records for small aircraft, including a heavy seaplane.
• She became the first woman to fly as second pilot on commercial flights, when she badgered KLM into letting her fly on their European routes. Unfortunately, she was way ahead of her time and was forced to drop her idea of becoming a pilot on KLM’s new route to Indonesia after vitriolic attacks by both British and Dutch media.