Roberta Elizabeth Marshall Cowell (1918-2011) was a British racing driver and Second World War fighter pilot. She was the first known British trans woman to undergo gender reassignment surgery in 1948.
"For the first thirty-three years of my life, I was Robert Cowell, an aggressive male who had
piloted a Spitfire during the war {WW2}, designed and driven racing cars, married, and become the
father of two children.
Since May 18th, 1951, I have been Roberta Cowell, female. I have become a woman physically, psychologically, glandularly, and legally.
This incredible thing was not an overnight change. I had always known that my body had certain
feminine characteristics. My aggressively masculine manner compensated for this, at least as far as
normal men and women were concerned, but homosexuals invariably took me for one of themselves.
"Looking back now at my life as Robert Cowell, I can see how many of my ambitions, dislikes and
prejudices came from my realisation of my physical abnormalities. I was passionately enthusiastic
about motor-cars and motor-racing. It was the be-all and nearly the end-all of my existence. I did not
suspect, until I was psychoanalysed in 1948, that racing was for me a symbol of courage, power and
virility.
Unconsciously I knew I was not a normal male, and I desperately needed my symbol as a
reassurance. When I finally understood the full truth about myself, both mental and physical, that
tremendous and all-pervading enthusiasm for motor-racing vanished completely.
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