David Dennington

As a teenager, I read all Nevil Shute’s books, including Slide Rule, which tells of his days as an aeronautical engineer on the great behemoth R100 at Howden and of his nights as an aspiring novelist. I was fascinated by both these aspects of his life. He inspired me to write and to fly (ignorance is bliss!). The writing was put on hold while I went off around the world assisting in the management various construction projects and raising a family. I picked up flying in the Bahamas, scaring myself silly, and sailing in Bermuda. This was all good experience for writing about battling the elements, navigation and building large structures. Many years later, I read John G. Fuller’s The Airmen Who Would Not Die and my interest in airships was rekindled. It was time to pursue my dream—writing. My daughter was in Los Angeles, trying to get into films. I thought, stupidly, I could help her by writing a screenplay. I had done extensive research on the Imperial British Airship Program and attended many screenplay writing workshops at Bethesda Writer’s Center. I wound up writing two screenplays which had a modicum of success. The experts in the business told me the stories were good and that I just had to write them as novels. So, back to the Writer’s Center I went to learn the craft of novel writing. Five years later, with my daughter working as my editor and muse, the book was finished. Since writing The Airshipmen, after many requests, I have adapted it into a trilogy, which makes it far easier to handle and allows the text not to be so dense. However, most importantly, we’ve added forty or fifty photographs at the back of each book, making it easier for readers to visualize and follow those events in the 1920’s.