A friend of Richard Branson offered Brian Milton the chance to win a million dollars if he would delay - for six weeks - taking off on his microlight flight around the world, to allow the billionaire tycoon to race against him in three Virgin microlights.

The story emerges in Global Flyer, written by Milton, and published on November 23^rd by Mainstream Publishers, of Edinburgh.

Rory McCarthy, majority stakeholder in Lindstrand Balloons, which is building the balloon Branson plans to fly around the world, made the million-dollar offer eight days before Milton and his co-pilot, Keith Reynolds, left England in their weight-shift microlight on March 24^th this year.

Branson had twice turned down the chance to sponsor Milton's flight before it was picked up by GT Global, but after allegedly telling Rory McCarthy he was "humiliated" by media treatment of his attempts to fly around the world in a balloon - the envelope was blown away in Morocco - Branson asked McCarthy in the middle of February to organise a Virgin attempt at flying around the world in microlights.

McCarthy ordered three Shadow microlights which, with clipped wings and Rotax 912 engines, were capable of cruising at 100 mph, against the 60 mph cruising speed of Milton's GT Global Flyer.

McCarthy himself, a self-made multi-millionaire, was due to fly one of the Shadows; the other was to be flown by a hotshot US woman fighter pilot called Jackie Parker (the third was a reserve, a prudent decision because, on a practice flight, McCarthy wiped off the undercarriage of one Shadow).

Despite claiming to be capable of flying around the world in 30 days, against Milton's target of 80 days, McCarthy asked for a postponement of Milton's flight until the middle of May, to enable the Virgin team to solve the over-heating problems caused by putting a 912 engine on a Shadow.

Milton rejected the overture ("I would not have delayed for a chance to win $10 million", he said), and McCarthy was driven to admit: "For Branson, this is just a game, but for you, it's blood!"

Milton set out with Reynolds to try and become the first men to fly around the world in a microlight, and incidentally, beat the 175-day record for a circumnavigation by an open-cockpit single-engine aircraft set by 4 Americans in 1924. One hundred and twenty days later, Milton landed alone back in London.

Global Flyer is his terrific story of what happened. It includes being buzzed 10 times by a Syrian Mig 21 fighter jet; six outlandings in the Saudi Desert with an over-heating engine, and replacing that engine; flying over thousands of miles of trackless ocean; fighting bureaucrats in China, Japan and Russia, and losing Keith in the process; crossing Siberia in freezing temperatures, and covered in ice flying across the deadly Bering Sea from Russia to Alaska; racing official tornado warnings across America, and the final tremendous record-making series of flights across the North Atlantic.

Flying into deepest Russia, Milton lost his sponsor as well as his friend, and at Nome, Alaska, found himself on his own, half the world away from home. Despite unanimous opinion that he should find another partner, he flew on alone.

But this is not just a Boys Own Paper story. Milton writes with compassion and insight about his own extraordinary fight against fears of height, and how he overcame them by nursing the innocent vision of a beautiful young amateur actress called Helen Dudley, or by singing Summertime 2,000 times.