Brunel

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today more than 150 years after they were built. Brunel represented the cutting edge of technological innovation in Victorian Britain, and his life gives us a window onto the social changes that accompanied the Industrial Revolution. Yet his work was not always successful, and his innovative approach to engineering projects was often greeted with suspicion from investors.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Julia Elton 2 episodes
  Former President of the Newcomen Society for the History of Engineering and Technology
• Ben Marsden No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen
• Crosbie Smith No other episodes
  Professor of the History of Science at the University of Kent

Reading list

• Brunel: The Man Who Built The World
  Steven Brindle (Phoenix, 2006) Google Books →
• Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel
  Angus Buchanan (London & Hambledon, 2002; Bloomsbury, 2007 ) Google Books →
• The Iron Ship: The History and Significance of Brunel's Great Britain
  Ewan Corlett (Moonraker Press, 1975) Google Books →
• John Scott Russell: A Great Victorian Engineer and Naval Architect
  George S. Emmerson (John Murray, 1977) Google Books →
• Brunel's Ships
  Denis Griffiths, Andrew Lambert and Fred Walker (National Maritime Museum/Chatham Publishing, 1999) Google Books →
• Engineering Empires: A Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth Century Britain
  Ben Marsden and Crosbie Smith (Macmillan, 2005) Google Books →
• The Works of Isambard Kingdom Brunel: An Engineering Appreciation
  Alfred Pugsley (Cambridge University Press, 1980) Google Books →
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel
  L. T. C. Rolt (Penguin, 1990) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b04nvbp1

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04nvbp1

Auto-category: 620 (Engineering and allied operations)