Articles, interviews and events

Phil Hamlyn Williams

My interviews and articles.

I was pleased to be included on the Great British Manufacturing Podcast. You can listen by following the link. Before How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World was published Joe Bush, editor of the Manufacturer, interviewed me about it and there is a link to the transcript. My publisher, Pen & Sword invited me to write a guest blog. Most recently I have given a talk to the City of Lincoln Branch of the Historical Association and the link is to a voice recording. Here is a voice recording of my talk at the SPARK engineering festival.

My podcast interview with the Great British Manufacturing Podcast with MTD MFG

Interview with Joe Bush at The Manufacturer

Pen & Sword Guest Blog

My article on Civilian Expertise in War

Talk to Historical Association 13 March 2023

Cliff Notes podcast

My article in My Local Lincolnshire following SPARK

My article on Vehicles to Vaccines on My Local Lincolnshire

APS Books guest blog on Vehicles to Vaccines

How Manufacturing Shaped Britain

My explorations are moving toward the built environment. This book sets out to discover how manufacturing shaped this island. Why manufacturing spread across the country, how it grew, why it declined and what was left. It is looking at manufacturing through the lens of geography. Manufacturing transformed the places where it took place. Villages became […]

The American relationship

America has been there in the background all my life. My father was a fan; I had an American godmother. Both these stemmed from the Second World War and my father’s role in army supply, where American industry played such a large part. I went on from there to explore army supply in the First […]

Youth Unemployment

Alan Milburn has published the first part of his report on Youth Unemployment The Guardian ends its leader on target when it says say ‘there needs to be work’. What is the point in training for jobs that don’t exist? I have spent the last five years exploring the story of British manufacturing witnessing from […]

The State we were in?

I read Will Hutton’s The State We’re In when it was first published thirty years ago. I had left my job in the accounting profession for a new career in the not for profit sector. In many ways I was filled with hope. In his Observer piece this Sunday Hutton writes: ‘Yet in 2026 we […]

From gypsum to granite

My journey began near to where Gypsum is mined in Leicestershire by British Gypsum now owned by the French St Gobain. My destination was Penmaenmawr overlooking Anglesey where some of the finest granite was quarried. En route I passed some icons of British Manufacturing. First came Rolls-Royce in Derby with the history of the WW2 […]