Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World - Hardcover

' ... a magnificent account of British aviation, when a new Elizabethan age seemed to have dawned of supersonic derring-do ... brimful of racy incident and exquisitely written ... this book stands out as a hymn to Jet Age glory days, and a marvel of reminiscence besides.' --Ian Thomson, Evening Standard

'A beautifully written re-creation of a vanished cultural and technological landscape. [Hamilton-Paterson's] achievement is to capture perfectly the mood of the 10 years after the second world war when British heroes seemed to rule the skies ... this wonderful book is a study in failure, the story of swashbuckling heroes tilting at windmills while their masters frittered away Britain's technological inheritance. And yet ... what lingered in the mind were the memories of the ''golden men and golden machines that unquestionably blazed amid the dispiriting muddle.'' ' --Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

'Empire of the Clouds is a splendid, meticulous and stylish story of wonderful machines and the men who made them. It is also a tale of fudging, incompetence, malice, complacency and ignorance. It is a story of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. It is a very British tale indeed.' --Michael Bywater, The Independent

In 1945 Britain was the world's leading designer and builder of aircraft - a world-class achievement that was not mere rhetoric. And what aircraft they were. The sleek Comet, the first jet airliner. The awesome delta-winged Vulcan, an intercontinental bomber that could be thrown about the sky like a fighter. The Hawker Hunter, the most beautiful fighter-jet ever built and the Lightning, which could zoom ten miles above the clouds in a couple of minutes and whose pilots rated flying it as better than sex. How did Britain so lose the plot that today there is not a single aircraft manufacturer of any significance in the country? What became of the great industry of de Havilland or Handley Page? And what was it like to be alive in that marvellous post-war moment when innovative new British aircraft made their debut, and pilots were the rock stars of the age? James Hamilton-Paterson captures that season of glory in a compelling book that fuses his own memories of being a schoolboy plane spotter with a ruefully realistic history of British decline - its loss of self confidence and power. It is the story of great and charismatic machines and the men who flew them: heroes such as Bill Waterton, Neville Duke, John Derry and Bill Beaumont who took inconceivable risks, so that we could fly without a second thought. In this special fully illustrated and lavishly produced large format hardback edition James's text is joined by glorious photographs that precisely capture the elegance, excitement and genius of these extraordinary aircraft, and offer a behind the scenes glimpse into a lost world of pioneering design, engineering and the daring of a generation of test pilots.