THE BIG HOP
Out now: order links below
“An engrossing account … a delectable serving of escapist nostalgia, a heroic adventure story perfect for a time when genuine heroes are few … This book was a joy to read”
THE TIMES
(Book of the Week)
“A glorious romp through an overlooked part of aviation history, stuffed full of intriguing characters and white-knuckle courage”
SUNDAY TIMES
“A true-life thriller … the accumulating tension of a whodunnit … The Big Hop reminded me of a John Buchan novel. Rooney has Buchan’s knack for acute imagery … and for spare, compelling action scenes … There may be some risk of air-sickness reading Rooney—but there is no danger of boredom”
THE OBSERVER
“Excellent … [The Big Hop] consists of colourful biographical sketches of the aviators who took part in the competition and thrilling accounts of their efforts”
DAILY MAIL
“Gripping, sensitively written … a rich, deeply contextualized story … recounted by Rooney with page-turning panache”
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
“I haven’t been so under the spell of a book about dangerous journeys since reading David Grann’s spectacular The Wager … Rooney comes into his own as a master of suspense … a sure-footed combination of technical detail, lively characterisation and artful narrative structure that keeps the tension going until the final pages … a splendid book”
LITERARY REVIEW
“Riveting … The Big Hop restores the 1919 achievement of those two young men, Alcock and Brown, to their rightful place in aviation history”
WALL STREET JOURNAL
“A gripping history … superb”
IRISH INDEPENDENT
“Enchanting narrative history … very fine”
UNSEEN HISTORIES
“Rendered in Rooney’s graceful prose, this makes for a breathtaking tale of bravery, perseverance, and fortune”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
(starred review)
“Rooney’s description of the crossing has all the panache of a Boy’s Own story”
HISTORY TODAY
“Thanks to David Rooney’s elegant, passionate and meticulous retelling of what went into that first ‘Big Hop,’ we can experience in words so much of what it must have been like to be a part of it. The Big Hop may be the finest aviation history you ever get to read”
BOOKREPORTER
“Through vivid storytelling and meticulous research, Rooney uncovers the forgotten aviators who risked everything to push the boundaries of flight … a gripping and heartfelt account of one of aviation’s most remarkable yet largely forgotten milestones”
VINTAGE AVIATION NEWS
“A soaring account of the race to make the first flight across the Atlantic”
THE BOOKSELLER
“One of the most astonishing moments in aviation history finally gets its due in The Big Hop, a vivid and utterly compelling account of the 1919 contest to cross the Atlantic by plane. David Rooney is an expert storyteller with a big heart, capturing not only the perils faced by the intrepid airmen who attempted the flight, but also their humanity”
JOHN LANCASTER
Author of The Great Air Race
“The Big Hop is a fabulous book. It works on every level, balancing technological know-how with superb characterisation. A gripping read”
JACKY HYAMS
Author of The Female Few and Hurricane
UK edition from Chatto & Windus
US edition from W. W. Norton
The powerful true story of the first flight across the Atlantic and the ordinary heroes who risked their lives in pursuit of progress.
In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in “the Big Hop”: an audacious race to be the first to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight, made it to Ireland.
Celebrated on both continents, the transatlantic contest offered a surge of inspiration—and a welcome distraction—to a public reeling from the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But the seven airmen who made the attempt were quickly forgotten, their achievement overshadowed by the solo Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart years later.
In The Big Hop, I grant the pioneering aviators of 1919 the spotlight they deserve. From Harry Hawker, the pilot who as a young man had watched Houdini fly over Australia, to the engineer Ted Brown, a US citizen who joined the Royal Flying Corps, I trace the lives of the unassuming men who performed extraordinary acts in the sky.
Mining evocative first-person accounts and aviation archives, I also follow the participants’ journeys: learning to fly on flimsy aeroplanes made of timber struts and varnished fabric; surviving the bloodiest war that Europe had ever yet seen; and battling faulty coolant systems, severe storms, and extreme fatigue while attempting the Atlantic. I transport readers to the world in which the great contest took place and trace the rise of aviation to its daredevil peak in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Recounting a deeply moving adventure, The Big Hop explores why flights like these matter, and why we take to the skies. Available now, wherever you get your books.
“As they spiralled down, Brown loosened his safety belt and gathered up his notes. He and Alcock looked once more at the aneroid, and then at one another. It showed 100 feet—and it was still falling. Brown knew only too well what was coming, because it had happened to him before ...”