A celebrity pilot of sorts in the 1960s, Diana Patten was a woman with flying in her blood, who fulfilled her ambition of launching her own aerodrome, and received a huge amount of press attention along the way.

An unusual path perhaps, for someone who attended a Swiss finishing school and was presented at Buckingham Palace as a debutante.

Now 80, Diana, who lives in Pett Level, still takes to the air whenever she can, and has passed her love of flying on to both her children; her son Jamie now runs Headcorn Aerodrome, in Kent.

She has decided to tell her story in full for the first time, which has now been published as Redhead In The Clouds, written by journalist Greer Harris.

“I intend to keep flying, because as they say, if you don’t use it, you lose it,” says Diana.

When we meet, she hands me a scrapbook filled with press cuttings dating back to the 1960s. She even appeared in The Argus, when she flew in to Brighton to publicise the ice rink, in her eye-catching orange Dauphin aeroplane and matching orange trouser suit. At the time, Diana says, flying was an economical way to travel, and she recounts in the book tales of flying up to Norfolk to pick up chicken vaccine, or over to France in the Dauphin with the family to do some shopping or for social events.

This earned Diana the tabloid moniker “The Flying Housewife”, and she even appeared on the cover of Readers Digest.

Diana explains that she has always been practically-minded; from a young age she loved the outdoors and cars in particular.

Her mechanical skills came in handy when Diana was living in Canada in her late teens and early twenties, and explored the country by road including Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains, and Vancouver Island.

She says she took plenty of spare parts and recounts replacing the petrol pump by the side of the road.

It was while she was in Canada that Diana got the flying bug, and obtained her pilot’s licence aged 18, though her first ever flight was with her father – a test pilot - as a very small child.

Diana says that she was also inspired by her glamorous aunt Paddy Naismith, an actress, pilot, and racing driver.

“She did inspire me, and of course my father did.

“She and I used to talk about aeroplanes, and she said ‘Diana, there’s no reason why you should not learn how to fly’.”

Fast forward a few years and this idea had become a reality.

“My first husband’s family owned this farm, which had been a wartime airstrip, and I thought let’s have an aeroplane as I’m a fully qualified pilot.”

When Diana and her then husband Chris moved to Shenley Farm at Headcorn, she bought her first plane.

“When I bought the Dauphin (a four-seater), and we were flying across the channel a lot, I did think – I’ve got my husband and my two children, and what a responsibility.

“But my checks were very meticulous, and my aeroplane was not insured for anyone else to fly.”

“My husband and I went to Deauville to the air rallies, and it was unusual for a woman to be flying her own plane to air rallies in those days.

“I got attention – I was quite a good pilot.”

It was in the early 1960s that pilots began flying into Headcorn, which was then and still is, a working farm.

“We had the sheep on the runway and if somebody was coming in we used to clear the sheep,” says Diana.

As Headcorn expanded and its reputation grew, visitors included leader of the Red Arrows Ray Hanna, Pashley, founder of the flying club at Shoreham Airport, and Sheila Scott, the first British pilot to fly solo around the world.

In 1964, Diana was asked by an army air corps pilot friend to go on a trip to South Africa to help fly the single-engine aircraft.

“I think we did something like 97 hours flying,” says Diana. “One of the most amazing sights was the moving of the Abu Simbel temple from the air. The pyramids from the air were incredible.”

The pair got as far as Khartoum before having to turn round as a result of unrest in Djerba.

Diana continued to fly when she had split up with Chris and met her second husband Robin, and lived in Suffolk.

“Robin was an agricultural merchant – it was easier to see the fields from the air, and I used to take him up quite a lot to do that,” says Diana.

Diana has been living in Pett Level for 25 years and has strong connections with Headcorn through her son and his family.

In fact she is now encouraging the next generation of pilots in the family. At 16, her granddaughter Alice is learning to fly.

“I push her a bit, I give her presents of flying lessons,” says Diana.

Redhead in the Clouds (Berforts Group Ltd) is out now.