I welcome this opportunity of following in the footsteps of the eminent and erudite speakers who have given the Barnwell Memorial Lecture on previous occasions. A number of my predecessors in this role were closely associated with Captain Barnwell. Indeed, some were included among his personal friends. I cannot make any such claim, but I did have the privilege of working in association with him for brief periods during 1936 and 1937. At that time I was, in modern parlance, the Project Officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment on the successful altitude record flights made by Sqn. Ldr. Swain in 1936 and Fit. Lt. Adam in 1937, in Barnwell's Bristol 138A mono-plane. We met on relatively few occasions but I well remember the kindly and tolerant attitude of this eminent aeronautical pioneer towards a very junior officer.