Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes

Fred Dibnah was a man born out of his time. His era should have been the 'magnificent age of British engineering' - the nineteenth century - and his heroes were the great industrial engineers of the period whose prolific innovations and dedicated work ethic inspired a national mood of optimism and captured the hearts of the British public. Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes tells the stories of some of these men - including George and Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Whitworth - and what it was that made them such inspirational figures to Fred. What were their backgrounds? Where did their drive and vision come from? What sort of people were they at work and at home? And what was their contribution to the history of industry and engineering? Most of them - like Fred - were colourful, larger-than-life characters for whom no challenge was too great. Taking these fascinating characters as inspiration, Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes gets to the very heart of what allowed nineteenth-century Britannia to rule the waves . . .

Préface
The extraordinary stories of the great Victorian engineers who inspired Fred Dibnah

Auteur

David Hall was Fred Dibnah's TV producer for many years, as well as a close personal friend. He made all of the most recent television series and is also the producer of Fred Dibnah's World. He is the author of Fred: The Definitive Biography of Fred Dibnah, Fred Dibnah's Buildings of Britain, Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain and Manchester's Finest, an account of life in Manchester in the aftermath of the Munich air disaster.

Texte du rabat

Fred Dibnah was a man born out of his time. His era should have been the 'magnificent age of British engineering' - the nineteenth century - and his heroes were the great industrial engineers of the period whose prolific innovations and dedicated work ethic captured the hearts of the British public.

Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes tells the stories of some of these men - including James Watt, Thomas Telford, George Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel amongst others - and what it was that made them such inspirational figures to Fred. What were their backgrounds? Where did their drive and vision come from? What sort of people were they at work and at home? And what was their contribution to the history of industry and engineering?

Most of them - like Fred - were colourful, larger-than-life characters for whom no challenge was too great. Taking these fascinating characters as his inspiration, Fred Dibnah's analysis of Victorian social history gets to the very heart of what allowed nineteenth-century Britannia to rule the waves...