George Pearson Glen Kidston (23 January 1899 – 5 May 1931) was an English motor racing driver and aviator who completed a record-breaking flight from Netheravon, Wiltshire to Cape Town, South Africa, in 1931.
[4] Following repatriation he served in the dreadnought HMS Orion, with the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland, running gunnery orders on open deck under direct enemy fire.
As a naval amateur he raced a Sunbeam motorcycle up the hill climb in Hong Kong and conducted speed trials on the sands, bringing the bike with him in his submarine which was patrolling the China Station.
Kidston entered the 1929 Irish Grand Prix Éireann Cup at Phoenix Park but was narrowly beaten by the Alfa Romeo of former Russian Imperial Guard officer Boris Ivanowski.
In 1929, Kidston was travelling from Croydon to Amsterdam aboard a German airliner when, 21 minutes into the flight, he sensed an imminent crash and assumed the safety position.
After earlier near misses in aeroplane, motorcycle, speed boat and even submarine accidents, Kidston was killed, only a year after his Le Mans triumph, when his borrowed de Havilland Puss Moth broke up in mid-air while flying through a dust storm over the Drakensberg mountains.
Kidston's gravestone at St. Peter's in Glasbury-upon-Wye on the Welsh borders, his childhood home, reads "Time and tide wait for no man", and has a sundial.