I write blogs as my research progresses and so the earlier ones relate to my previous project Dunkirk to D Day, although they are linked. The men of whom I wrote had feet in both camps, they stepped up as soldiers in two world wars, but then pursued careers in British manufacturing. I wrote an article on Civilian Expertise in War published in the Historian, the magazine of The Historical Association.
The Silk Road – a new History of the World
Silk enters the story of British manufacturing in a number of places, not least Macclesfield which has its own silk road. This post is about that rather longer silk road that runs from China to the Atlantic. I have used a possibly world changing book as my source which views the growth of trade and…
Alexander Wilson – Vauxhall Motors
Ian Coomber, in his book, Vauxhall: Britain’s Oldest Car Maker, does something I’ve not seen elsewhere, in that he names people who bought the cars adding something of their experience. He adds, ‘reliability was certainly not guaranteed from any manufacturer and car reliability trials and hill climbs were becoming popular with the public as a…
Giants of British Manufacturing
If I look at the years from the start of the Industrial Revolution up to the Festival of Britain, I can draw up a list a relatively well known names of the movers and shakers of British Manufacturing. Indeed I have identified many of them in this blog and written about them in How Britain…
Alastair Pilkington – Pilkington and float glass
In Vehicles to Vaccines I named as my construction hero Alastair Pilkington, another Cambridge graduate of Mechanical Sciences. Readers may recall Kelvin Bray in the context of energy. This second graduate was a little older, having served during the Second World War and returned to complete his degree. His name was Pilkington, but he was…
The Weston Family – Associated British Food
Garfield Weston set his family company on course to become the anchor-man of British food manufacturing. The company is now called Associated British Food. Canadian Willard Garfield Weston was born in 1898, his father had emigrated to Canada and created a baking business there. In 1934, Weston moved to England and founded Allied Bakeries which…
Jaguar and Land Rover – an unlikely pairing?
William Lyons and the Wilks brothers created remarkable companies which made iconic vehicles. Was it just fate that brought the companies together? William Lyons and Maurice Wilks were born three years apart; Lyons in 1901 in Blackpool. Son of a piano maker, William attended Arnold House School and in 1922 set up in business making…
Winners and losers since 1951 – Rolls-Royce and Bentley
Reading through my book Vehicles to Vaccines’, some companies jump out as conspicuous success stories, and some less so. Beneath the surface there are many hundreds of smaller British manufacturing concerns which form the backbone of this sector. Sales of British companies is a recurring theme and there are a number of ways of viewing…
National Manufacturing Day
I am proud to highlight just some of my stars in British Manufacturing. The image is of the organising committee of the Great Exhibition of 1851 People Abraham Darby William Armstrong Allen, John and Michael Clark of Plessey Ferranti Marconi William Morris Places Coventry Birmingham London Manchester Sheffield Stockport Industries The Thames Shipbuilders The Quaker…
Sir Arnold Hall – Hawker Siddeley
As a schoolboy in the fifties, my birthday treat was a trip to Heathrow Airport to stand on the roof of the Queen’s Building to watch the aircraft. My favourites were the Vickers Viscount, in which I was fortunate enough to fly on a number of occasions, and the de Havilland Comet. My aircraft manufacturing…
Financiers, some who sailed near and over the line
In my exploration of British manufacturing, I have come across many men whose technical expertise advanced the cause of British industry. There were also those who brought a different kind of expertise and perhaps a different outlook on life. George Hudson – the railway king George Hudson was one of these. He became a firm…
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