San Antonio Book Festival - S.C. Gwynne
Kenny Braun
Book Festival Author

S.C. Gwynne

S.C. Gwynne is the author of Hymns of the Republic, and the New York Times bestsellers Rebel Yell and Empire of the Summer Moon, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He spent most of his career as a journalist, including stints with TIME as bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor, and with Texas Monthly as executive editor. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife. Gwynne’s latest book is His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine. 

More About S.C. Gwynne

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Book by S.C. Gwynne

  • His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine by S.C. Gwynne

    His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine

    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.


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