Dr Eckener’s Dream Machine by Douglas Botting, HarperCollins, £17.99, ISBN 0002571919
LAST August the new, helium-filled, passenger-laden Zeppelin NT arose from its mooring at Friedrichshafen in Germany. It was the rebirth of one man’s dream-but not that of Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, whose name branded those rigid airships, packed to the gills with highly explosive hydrogen gas. It was Hugo Eckener’s vision, the magnetic character at the centre of Douglas Botting’s fine new book, Dr Eckener’s Dream Machine.
According to Botting, an expert on both Germany and exploration, Eckener came to von Zeppelin’s attention in 1900 when he wrote…
