http://www.furthermore.org.uk/static.../penrose10.htm
in my searches I found this, if the link will work facinating reading but this is the bit that caught my eye
Harald Penrose 10. New Aircraft by Phil Delnon
By the mid-1930s, things were hotting up. The Depression was easing, and Westland was working on many different aircraft. Penrose found himself on a familiarisation course for the Cierva autogyro. Being the man he was he decided to try diving it, working step by step until he found his safe limit at 120mph. Penrose and his colleagues at Westland decided that the rotor blades must be twisting, and passed on a warning. The Cierva people dismissed this, saying that civilian pilots would not dive the machine. Maybe not, but military ones would: a few months later an RAF autogyro dived from 1000 feet and crashed into the sea.
Meanwhile Westland was persisting with the futuristic swept-wing, tailless Pterodactyl. RAE pilots had not been able to make it spin, so Penrose had a bash. Eventually he managed it, and found the recovery very simple. In 1933 a visitor came to Westland to exchange information on wind-tunnel tests of delta-wing stability and control: it was Alexander Lippisch, whose passion for tailless gliders would lead to his design of the Me-163 rocket fighter.
More immediately significant for Westland was the first enclosed canopy on the DV6, which reduced the slipstream-buffeting for the pilot. Renamed the Wallace, the plane was ordered for the Auxiliary Air Force.
With this security, experiments with the Pterodactyl continued.
Always enthusiastic, Penrose found himself directed to an old dark house in deepest Dorset, where a white-bearded old man in a skull-cap was reading the Koran. He showed Penrose what remained of the tailless model gliders he had made and flown before the Wright Brothers flew. The largest of them had an 8ft wingspan and a close resemblance to the Pterodactyl which Penrose could not help but comment on. Perhaps that's because one of your designers came to see me, was the laconic reply.
Next for testing was a high-winged monoplane with a 60ft wingspan and a wide, fixed undercarriage. Named the P7, Penrose had been involved with its design in some detail, and did not anticipate too many problems when he took it up. Nor were there many; the main one being distortion of the wing when rolling at high speed. The chief designer was unwilling to believe this until taken up for a demonstration...
Penrose was becoming valuable now: not only did he have a parachute, but his insurance was raised to £5,000. He was about to appreciate why. Aeronautical engineers had already realised that mounting the engine in the middle of an aeroplane would make for a much more central centre of gravity and a much better aerobatic performance - important for a fighter. This was to lead to such aircraft as the American Bell P-38
Airacobra, which actually went into service.
Alice in Wonderland Duncan or what?
sorry 
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