“Living the Goode Life — at full throttle, The Autobiography of Richard Goode” has been published by Porter Press International.
“This is an extraordinary story, beginning with a bare-foot colonial childhood, and indeed not speaking English until he was four, yet ending up at Cambridge, ultimately dealing at the highest levels of the Russian aviation industry,” the publisher reports. “Richard Goode’s life has been a fascinating series of activities, both social and business, dealing with an incredible range of people from the notorious Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, to whom he was selling banknotes (legally) to a car dealer who was embroiled in the Brinks-Mat gold robbery (illegally); dealing with Russian spies at the behest of MI5; international corporate headhunting and aerobatics at the highest levels. And all this with a huge zest for living life to the full.”
Highlights include:
- Becoming one of the world’s top aerobatic pilots and making his own aerobatic aircraft
- Buying the first privately owned Russian aeroplane in the West and then acting as a sales agent for Sukhoi
- Selling more than 450 aircraft, including the world’s only privately-owned Harrier jet fighter
- Establishing a barely-credible business sending people from the West to fly front-line Russian jet fighters.
Throughout, his life has been anything but straightforward, with a fair share of crashes and calamities. Most dramatic was the structural failure of his aerobatic plane during a public display resulting in a barely-survivable, catastrophic accident, leading to three months in a hospital bed.
The hardcover book, which includes more than 150 images, is available through the publisher’s website, for RRP: £40.00 (Or about $49 U.S.).