Fred Dibnah’s Industrial Age: A Guide to Britain’s Industrial Heritage – Where to Go, What to See.
Accompanying the television series and DVD, Fred Dibnah tells Britain’s industrial history and picks out the machinery that made history. Traveling throughout Britain, Dibnah describes what life was really like for people in the industrial age and provides a list of industrial heritage sites to visit.
Details
Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: BBC Books (11 Feb 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0563384824
ISBN-13: 9780563384823
Product Dimensions: 24.9 x 19 x 2.8 cm
If you (like me) want an overview of where to see the remains of Britain’s enormous industrial past, this is a fantastic book. It helps if you’ve seen Fred Dibnah on television before, because he writes the way he speaks and that can take a bit of getting used to.
In places this book is more a collection of disconnected personal memories than facts, but we can be charitable and agree that that just adds to the charm. In some places, however, it would have been nice to have a bit more explanation behind the technical terms used.
At the end of the book there’s the Gazetteer, an overview of Britain with maps and places to see. Places mentioned in the book that are also in the Gazetteer are printed in bold – sadly though there’s no indication of where so you end up hunting through the Gazetteer to find the correct page. The index isn’t much help here, since it’s fairly incomplete and almost randomly organised.
An excellent book that describes the evolution of transport and industrial progress in England. Fred goes off on tangents occasionally but that just high lights the genuine passion he has for his subject.