Richard Tames

978 0 7478 0603 5 (LL 44) 48 pp, 33 colour and 7 b/w ills.

The name of Robert Adam is today equated, as it was by his contemporaries, with taste, style and elegance. An obituary declared that Adam had produced a total change in the architecture of Britain. Adam’s huge legacy of drawings, now deposited at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, contains plans and sketches ranging in scale from candelabra and coach panels to an unrealised scheme for a triumphal entrance to the capital of his native Scotland. As able as he was ambitious, this second son of the leading Scottish architect of the day set out to conquer the English in their capital – and succeeded, returning in later life to leave his mark on Edinburgh as well. As visionary in the decoration of interiors as he was ingenious in the design of exteriors, Adam was more often responsible for the renovation, alteration or completion of existing buildings than for the creation of entirely new ones. Best known perhaps for his work on great private palaces such as Syon and Kenwood, Osterley and Kedleston, Saltram and Culzean, Adam was also responsible for churches and tombs, monuments and market-halls. A meticulous professional but a bold risk-taker, Robert Adam was buried in Westminster Abbey, showing that it was at last possible to be both hailed as an artist and deemed worthy to lie among kings.

Richard Tames is the originator of the Lifelines series. He teaches for Syracuse University’s London programme and is a qualified ‘Blue Badge’ tourist guide and the author of over a hundred books. Other titles for Shire by this author include:

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Harold Bode

978 0 85263 485 1 (LL 14) 48 pp, 22 ills.

The 'Father of British Waterways' , Brindley was responsible for the construction of over 4,000 miles of canals.

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Isambard Kingdom Brunel £4.50

Richard Tames

978 0 7478 0459 8 (LL 1) 48 pp, 28 ills.

The greatest engineer of his age, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859), accomplished works that others refused to contemplate: The Clifton suspension bridge over the Avon gorge at Bristol; the tunnel through almost two miles of solid rock at Box in Wiltshire; the first ship to be built completely of iron; and the precision with which his great bridge over the Tamar was assembled. He did have his failures, however, such as the atmospheric railway, in which his plans were thwarted by the limitations of nineteenth-century technology. However, his life was dogged by tragedy and near disaster, from his narrow escape from death when the water burst into the Thames tunnel he was building, to the heartbreaking problems of the Great Eastern. He died, saddened, before his great ship proved its worth, before the Clifton bridge was completed, in every sense a man who lived before his time.

Other titles for Shire by this author are:

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Michael Messenger

978 0 7478 0621 9 (LL 46) about 56 pp, colour and b/w ills.

Elgar was one of Britain’s greatest composers, but it is not always realised how great a struggle he had to achieve the fame and recognition that he eventually received. Through one tune, Land of Hope and Glory, for years a regular feature of the Last Night of the Proms, Elgar is irrevocably linked with old-fashioned concepts of ‘Empire’ and narrow nationalism, but there is far more to the man than that. He become the most famous British composer of his generation, receiving many of the highest honours that the nation could bestow upon him. His first great success was in 1899 with the Enigma Variations, and for the next twenty years he wrote a stream of oratorios, symphonies, concertos, smaller orchestral pieces and chamber works – musical masterpieces that are still heard and widely enjoyed today.

Michael Messenger is a director of the Elgar Foundation and Chairman of the Elgar Birthplace Management Committee.

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John Hannavy

978 0 7478 0351 5 (LL 38) 48 pp, 28 ills.

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) is universally recognised as the father of modern photography. His 'calotype' or 'Talbotype' process was the first working photographic process to use the now familiar format of negative and positive. He was an ambitious man and was often described by his college tutors as a genius. His interest spread far beyond the confines of photography and it was as a mathematician that he was awarded first Membership and then Fellowship of the Royal Society before the age of thirty-three. He was an accomplished astronomer, a keen archaeologist and a fluent master of Greek and Hebrew. He patented pioneering ideas for internal combustion engines as early as 1840 and through his life was at the forefront of progressive scientific thinking in England.

Professor John Hannavy is Head of Art and Design at Bolton Institute and has been collecting, researching and writing about the history of photography for over twenty-five years. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

Michael Barker

978 0 7478 0582 3 (LL 43) 48 pp, colour and b/w ills.

Sir Edwin Lutyens was England’s greatest and most prolific architect since Sir Christopher Wren. His career lasted more than half a century, from the reign of Queen Victoria until the Second World War. He designed many country houses and gardens, the Viceroy’s House in New Delhi and numerous monuments, war memorials and cemeteries. Lutyens’s work was romantic in inspiration, classical in discipline, yet complex and often abstract in design, but always executed with excellent craftsmanship using fine materials, including good brickwork and cut stone.

Michael Barker represents the Lutyens Trust and the fund-raising committee for the Franco-British Visitor Centre at Thiepval, for which he has also advised on the displays for Sir Edwin Lutyens.

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978 0 7478 0435 2 (LL 3) 64 pp, 30 ills.

William Morris’s many-sided career placed him at the centre of an age and culture he both condemned and shaped. Hailed nowadays as a pioneer of modern design, he was best known to his contemporaries as a poet. A man of immense energy, charm and imagination, Morris learned to turn private grief to public purpose. Having failed as an architect and a painter, he succeeded as a weaver, dyer, calligrapher, printer, businessman, journalist and novelist.
Morris’s dedication to making beauty an essential feature of daily life effected a revolution in public taste. A founding father of English socialism, William Morris has also belatedly been recognised as a far-sighted campaigner for conservation and environmental awareness. As Morris’s first biographer asserted, he aimed at nothing less than the re-integration of human life itself.

Lord Nuffield £3.50

Peter Hull

978 0 7478 0203 7 (LL 39) 48 pp, 22 ills.

It is largely a result of the career of motor manufacturerWilliam Richard Morris, Viscount Nuffield, that the university city of Oxford became one of Britain's foremost industrial cities. Leaving school at fourteen he was apprenticed to a bicycle repairer. Only nine months later he set up his own cycle business and from then on his rise to become one of Britain's leading industrialists was almost without setback. He was an astute businessman and an expert mechanic; he saw the need for a small economical car that was of high quality yet could be produced in large numbers. His special talent enabled him to obtain the right parts and to assemble them, and so the first Morris Oxford car appeared in 1913. Production boomed and Morris became a millionaire and was made a peer, but he was generous with his money and gave away over £30,000,000 in his lifetime, much of it to hospitals and other medical causes. He also financed the establishment of Nuffield College, Oxford, which bears his title. His name ceased to appear on motorcars after 1983 when Morris Motors was part of British Leyland, but the MG (Morris Garages) badge has survived under British Leyland's successor, Rover Cars.

Peter Hull was on the staff of the Vintage Sports-Car Club and a member of the Advisory Council of the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

John Anthony

978 0 85263 208 6 (LL 21) 48 pp, 30 ills.

Joseph Paxton is best known as the designer of the Crystal Palace, built to house the Great Exhibition held in Hyde Park in 1851, and the later Crystal Palace at Sydenham which survived until burnt down in 1936. But he had many more achievements to his credit in the course of an incredibly varied career. Born in humble circumstances, he became head gardener to the sixth Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth at the age of 23 and rapidly became not only the leading horticulturist of the day but also the trusted confidant of the Duke. His experiments in the design of glasshouses were to lead to the greatest glasshouse of all in Hyde Park. He wrote extensively, took a leading part in founding a national daily newspaper, was prominent in promoting railways, designed a number of public parks and was the architect of a large number of conventional buildings. He was MP for Coventry for eleven years, organised a civilian works corps to help the army in the Crimea and concerned himself with the sewerage and traffic problems of London.

The late John Anthony first became interested in Paxton when living within a few miles of Chatsworth, scene of so many of Paxton’s activities. Other Shire titles by this author:

John Ruskin £5.99

James S. Dearden

978 0 7478 0599 1 (LL 15) 64 pp, 41 colour and 22 b/w ills.

John Ruskin, one of the most prolific of nineteenth-century authors, first made a name as a writer on art with ‘Modern Painters’. His study of art and architecture in Britain and Europe led him to a consideration of the conditions of the people who lived in the same world as his art. His interests broadened to embrace social and political economy, and ideas which he propounded in such books as ‘Unto This Last’ have had a profound effect on life today. William Morris, Bernard Shaw and many other socialists practised what Ruskin had preached. The effects of his teaching can be seen today in green belts, town planning, smokeless zones, the Rent Restrictions Act and the National Trust. Ruskin was truly one of the prophets of the nineteenth century.

James S. Dearden was educated at Bembridge School, Isle of Wight, where he had opportunities to absorb Ruskin’s work and influence. He is a Companion of the Guild of St George and the Guild’s director for Ruskin studies.

George Stephenson £4.99

Adrian Jarvis

978 0 7478 0605 9 (LL 45) 48 pp, 27 colour and 16 b/w ills.

George Stephenson is among the most famous engineers of all time. His rise from ‘rags to riches’ is a stirring story of its kind, but many of the works attributed to him should in fact be credited to young subordinates, not least his son, Robert. But much of the work of innovative engineers for his period lay not in the work itself but in persuading people that such work was desirable and necessary. It was in this field that George Stephenson excelled, providing openings in which his young protégés could change the world. They did not let him down, and we should give him full credit for being ‘The Father of the Railways’.

Adrian Jarvis specialises in the engineering and finance of dock and harbour construction, on which he has published extensively, but he also has a strong interest in early railways and in the general history of technology. Other books for Shire by this author are:

Robert Stephenson £4.50

D. J. Smith

978 0 85263 186 7 (LL 8) 48 pp, 29 ills.

The construction of the London and Birmingham Railway was one of the greatest engineering feats since the erection of the pyramids. Wolverton Viaduct, Primrose Hill Tunnel, Tring and Blisworth cuttings were all major obstacles, but the greatest challenge of all to Robert Stephenson’s skill, courage and perseverance was Kilsby Tunnel – more than a mile long through a hill whose centre consisted of quicksands fed by underground springs and a subterranean lake. It took thirteen pumps working night and day for over nineteen months to staunch the quicksand. Robert Stephenson’s reputation is unjustly somewhat overshadowed by that of his father, George; Robert had all his father’s energy and inventive flair, but also a more sophisticated intelligence deriving from his better education. Stephenson was buried in Westminster Abbey, and such was the esteem in which he was held that Queen Victoria permitted his funeral cortege to pass through Hyde Park, a rare privilege.

Donald J. Smith’s interests included the graphic arts, the study of transport history – especially railways and canals – and architecture. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

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Thomas Telford £4.99

Rhoda M. Pearce

978 0 85263 410 3 (LL 10) 48 pp, 25 ills.

Thomas Telford’s genius is reflected in the variety and great technical skill of his achievements, most of which are still in use today. But it is perhaps Telford’s work on Canalsin Britain which attracts most attention now: the Ellesmere Canal with its magnificent aqueducts at Pontcycyllte and Chirk; the Caledonian cutting its way through the Great Glen in Scotland. Telford’s appointment as first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers showed that his generation recognised him as the real founder of his profession, and perhaps the naming of Telford New Town after him is an indication that his great contribution to civil engineering is being recognised in our own times.

Rhoda M. Pearce has been both a deputy head and Headmistress and has edited an archive teaching unit on Thomas Telford and a documentary source book, Canals, for use in schools.

Richard Trevithick £4.50

978 0 85263 177 5 (LL 6) 48 pp, 52 ills.

The career of this erratic genius is an extraordinary story. The son of a Cornish mine captain, Trevithick single-handed totally changed the unwieldy steam engines of Newcomen and Watt to efficient prime movers with many applications, inventing in the process a vast range of widely differing machines, from high-pressure engines to the world’s first railway locomotive. His immense physical strength was legendary; he could write his name on a beam six feet from the floor with half a hundredweight hanging from his thumb. Yet his strength was nothing compared to his mental energy and initiative, involving schemes for mechanical refrigeration, tunnelling under the Thames, wreck salvage, agricultural machinery, land reclamation, and gun mountings.

James Hodge is a member of the Newcomen Society and was chairman of the Trevithick Society for many years.

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Josiah Wedgwood £4.50

978 0 85263 692 3 (LL 4) 48 pp, 26 ills.

Josiah Wedgwood not only transformed the manufacture of pottery and the methods of its distribution but also revolutionised industry generally. He originated mass-production to increase efficiency and reduce waste, thus providing a product that more people could afford, and pioneered techniques of salesmanship, attracting the custom of royalty and maintaining the same high standard in all his ware. He treated his employees with benevolence, introducing unprecedented methods of management. Despite having a leg amputated at the prime of life, Wedgwood nonetheless continued to devote his attention to his diverse interests and to the industry of which he was the founding father.
Richard Tames is the originator of the Lifelines series. He read history at Cambridge, took a Master’s degree in politics at London and teaches for Syracuse University. He is the author of more than sixty titles, and is a qualified ‘Blue Badge’ tourist guide. Other titles for Shire by this author are:

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