His Majesty's Airship

The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine

De: S. C. Gwynne

Narrado por: Nicholas Boulton

From historian and bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a “captivating, thoroughly researched” (The New York Times Book Review) tale of the rise and fall of the world’s largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian princess at its heart.

The tragic fate of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.

Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the 20th century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world’s most advanced engineering—she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire, from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this, and R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea.

Gwynne’s chronicle features a cast of remarkable—and tragically flawed—characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and George Herbert Scott, a national hero who was the first person to cross the Atlantic twice in any aircraft, in 1919—eight years before Lindbergh’s famous flight—but who devolved into drink and ruin. These historical figures—and the ship they built, flew, and crashed—come together in “a Promethean tale of unlimited ambitions and technical limitations, airy dreams and explosive endings” (The Wall Street Journal).

©2023 Samuel C. Gwynne. All rights reserved. (P)2023 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Meticulous and compelling

This is the accounting of the British answer to Germany’s Graf zeppelin program. Kristen, the HMS R101, the British crown attempted to meet and exceed German engineering and have these massive airships be the answer to help them travel to the far reaches of their empire.

Well researched and told.

History At Its Best

If you love history, you'll love this book. I was mesmerized by the story itself and then the reader did such a great job that I want to hear more every time I listened to a little. The story of an airship does not sound exciting, but this story was filled with excitement, intrigue, love, and tragedy. If you're looking for a delightful history, that has a compelling narrator, and you want to learn something about airship development in the early 20th century, this is the book for you.

Interesting

A great wealth of information on a topic totally unfamiliar with myself 💨🌬️I was not a fan of the referenced footnotes being included 🧐

A fascinating account, I can’t believe I have never heard of this ship

This is such a fascinating story of a part of history I knew so little about. The only ship I had ever heard of was the German Hindenburg. But wow, there is so much more to the history of these rigid airship’s. I still can’t even believe they even flew Safely for as long as they did. I highly recommend this book if you love aeronautics and history.

Great Book on an obscure subject.

I thought the book was well written, and well read. It is an obscure subject, that I found much more interesting than I thought I would.

O, The Humanity

In a tale researched and written as well as his unquestionable classic, "Empire of the Summer Moon", Gwynne gives us the full backstory of Britain's ill-fated attempt to extract empire value from a planned fleet of lighter-than-air dirigibles.

Following largely the empire-minded Lord Thompson, Air Minister of Britain at the time, he finds answers to the question, "Why would good and reasonable men promote the use of travel-technology that had already been proven wildly risky."

As an elementary school student, one of my favorite books in the library was, "The History of the Dirigible Airship." Even at that age, while secretly thinking the massive ships would be really neat to see, I concluded, "They all crashed, burned and lots of people died." Even then I knew they were a bad idea.

It feels like Gwynne may have had a similar fascination with the great airships, and had come to the same conclusion: airships were a bad idea. But he eloquently tells us why in a manner echoing, in story form, the cry of Herb Morrison in his 1937 eyewitness report of the Hindenburg explosion and crash at Lakehurst, ”O the humanity!"

This was an excellent book and I've given it triple 5's.

Gwynne does it again! Fantastic historical biography.

Gwynne does it again! Fantastic historical biography. Every one of Gwynne’s books are marvelously detailed and informative.

Fascinating history they never told us

Great writing that tours us deep into the intersections of empires and politics and aeronautics and doomed romance. Complex interplay of humans and daring and massively flawed airships. Shocking egos meet dysfunctional aerospace in this real life tale of a vanishing empire. Beautifully written book -- and the narrator is consistently outstanding. Highly recommend.

Not Gwynnes best effort

I found this book to be rambling and overall not very interesting. This material might have made for a good long article in a magazine, but for a book it was way too much detail about things few care about.

Grand dreams and wishful thinking

It's stunning to think how many people's lives and livelihoods were lost to the grand dreams. The complexities of operating a rigid airship really come out in this tail. And the unlikely event that any would ever be practical make me wonder how long it will take the latest crop of airships to come a cropper.