His Majesty's Airship

"""We can be grateful to S.C. Gwynne for bringing [the R101] back to life in his captivating, thoroughly researched book. Gwynne spins a rich tale of technology, daring and folly that transcends its putative subject. . . . That the ending is no surprise takes nothing from the power of his story."" --New York Times Book Review ""A Promethean tale of unlimited ambitions and technical limitations, airy dreams and explosive endings."" --Wall Street Journal ""Gwynne brings this story alive with a sharp eye for detail, an engaging empathy for his characters, and a gift for storytelling second to none."" --Air Mail ""In Gwynne's masterfully told tale, the characters behind the making of the prosaically named R101 are at least as vivid as the airship itself."" --The Advocate ""An addictive account the rise and disastrous fall of the R101 airship. Author S C Gwynne, no stranger to literary success, does a fine job in explaining the machine's lineage, capturing the spirit of the times and something of the never-say-die attitude that persisted. A compelling read."" --FlyPast Magazine ""His Majesty's Airship reminds us how those magnificent men in their flying machines persisted, chasing a dream of a future--and a resurgent empire--that was never to be."" --New York Sun ""The tragic story of the British airship R101--which went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later--has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty's Airship, historian S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong."" --Skybrief ""Gwynne thrillingly and meticulously documents [how] the building of R101 and the entire journey were doomed by bad decisions, inflated egos, faulty technology, and bad luck."" --Stuck At the Airport ""Gwynne delivers a fascinating account of the bad decisions, distractions, naivete, and sheer incompetence behind the crash of the massive British airship R101 in a field outside Beauvais, France, in October 1930. Meticulously researched and vibrantly written, this is an immersive and enlightening account of how hubris and impatience can lead to disaster."" --Publishers Weekly (starred review) ""S.C. Gwynne is a consummate storyteller, and his well-documented account of the 1930 crash of a spectacularly large hydrogen-filled British airship is not to be missed."" --BookPage ""A sturdy, well-paced contribution to aviation history."" --Kirkus ""Gwynne meticulously recounts the final flight of the British airship R101 and the entire zeppelin era in this engaging history. There is plenty of international zeppelin history here, but it is the personal conflicts in the R101 control room, exacerbated by Scott's spiraling problem with alcoholism, the social context, and the near minute-by-minute presentation of the tragic flight that will capture reader attention."" --Booklist ""Gwynne's meticulous reporting and the sweet rise and fall of his prose are a mirror to our own foibles, desires, dreams."" --Doug Stanton, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Horse Soldiers ""Aviation history is nothing less than miraculous; it took a mere sixty-three years, after all, to get from the Wright brothers to Neil Armstrong. Barely a century ago, however, our skies were filled with a bounty of gliders, biplanes, and flying boats; balloons, blimps, and zeppelins. With His Majesty's Airship, the inimitable Mr. Gwynne explores in vivid detail how this dream bloomed, and how it, in time, fell tragically to earth. He has written both a remarkable history and an eye-opening revelation of technology's recurrent phantasms."" --Craig Nelson, award-winning author of Pearl Harbor and Rocket Men"