Almost twenty-two years after Concorde completed its final commercial flight to Bristol in 2003, a US-made prototype jet, Boom Supersonic’s XB-1, has successfully broken the sound barrier. As a historian of industry, politics and technology in Britain and the wider world, Dr Keith Mc Loughlin considers the significance of the achievement, the challenges facing supersonic transport and the historical lessons to be learnt if it is to succeed…

To read more from Keith on Concorde, check out the original Arts Matter blog post!