His Majesty's Airship

"""A Promethean tale of unlimited ambitions and technical limitations, airy dreams and explosive endings."" -Wall Street Journal ""[A] 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 ""Magnificent, gripping . . . utterly thrilling, the greatest tale of aerial hubris since Icarus."" -Daily Express (UK), Best Books of 2023 ""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 ""I loved every page of this book. Even though we're aware of R101's tragic fate from the beginning, Gwynne still delivers an intensely dramatic story."" -The Times (UK), Best History Books of 2023 ""[An] excellent account of perhaps Britain's greatest imperial folly."" -The Spectator (UK) ""Dramatic, and laden with hubris. . . . The story of the R101 is an astounding and perhaps not unique cocktail of personal ambition, government mismanagement and bad engineering practice. . . . [Gwynne] paints a fascinating picture. . . . A full and compelling account of this abandoned dream."" -Times Literary Supplement (UK) ""A fascinating account of the bad decisions, distractions, naivet�, 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) ""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 ""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 of 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 ""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 ""Not to be missed. . . . S.C. Gwynne is a consummate storyteller."" -BookPage ""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 ""Gripping."" -Unseen Histories ""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 ""One of the most fascinating and interesting books I have read about airships. . . . Gwynne is certainly a very good storyteller!"" -Aviation Book Review ""A great book. Highly recommended."" -Compulsive Reader ""I've just closed this book and this is the feeling-I'm standing inside the massive airship, a whale in the air, on its aluminum 'ribs, ' looking far up into the belly as ten-story tall gas bags shift and pulse like creatures in a fable. . . . Gwynne's meticulous reporting an"