S8 Ep272: KIT THOMPSON AND THE IMPERIAL AIRSHIP SCHEME Colleague S.C. Gwynne. Gwynne introduces Christopher "Kit" Thompson, an aristocratic Air Secretary obsessed with Romanian Princess Marta Bibesco. Thompson championed the "Imperial Airship Scheme" to link the Br
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchewas, Sam Gwyn. |
| 0:07.0 | His new book is His Majesty's Airship, The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine, |
| 0:12.0 | rigid airships, competition, nationalism. |
| 0:16.0 | Kit Thompson is a man who's born in India near Bombay in 1875. |
| 0:22.5 | His father's a major general. |
| 0:24.3 | He's related to a man who will become the head of the army in India. |
| 0:29.0 | His mother's family is extremely well known everywhere. |
| 0:32.9 | He becomes a member of the Royal Army and Royal Engineers. |
| 0:37.1 | Goes out to India. |
| 0:38.8 | He fights with everybody. |
| 0:40.0 | As far as I can see, this is Zellig of the British Army. |
| 0:43.1 | He fights with, he fights in the Boer War. |
| 0:46.7 | He fights at Jerusalem and the Second War with Allenby. |
| 0:49.6 | He's in the British Expeditionary Force with Hague. |
| 0:53.1 | And then he's assigned 1915 to Romania, |
| 0:56.6 | and therein lies the tale. |
| 0:58.8 | Who does he meet in Romania, Sam, who comes to dominate his life? |
| 1:05.0 | All right. |
| 1:05.3 | Christopher Birdwood-Thompson is, as you said, a man of empire. |
| 1:08.6 | I mean, he was raised multigenerational in the Raj, his family on both |
| 1:14.5 | sides extremely influential. He is in all those places indeed. This is yet another military |
| 1:22.0 | posting as part of the British Empire. He's sent to Bucharest in Romania, |
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