The Backroom Boys : The Secret Return of the British Boffin

A rapturous history of British engineering, a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers, Backroom Boys tells the story of how this country lost its industrial tradition and got back something else. 'A wonderful accomplishment - Backroom Boys sharply evokes a lost world of Dan Dare, Look and Learn and Meccano, and goes on to show us how that world was never lost: that it is, in fact, the secret history of today.' Ken MacLeod 'Unreservedly marvellous ...Francis Spufford is the Tom Wolfe of technology journalism.' Focus 'Provides start-to-finish enjoyment ...[Spufford] can make the heart leap simply by detailing what engineers do with mild steel or carbon fibre.' Sunday Times 'I don't want to pretend that Backroom Boys is perfect; It's just as near to it as makes no difference.' Daily Telegraph 'The man writes like a dream - informed, fresh, racy prose ...You wouldn't think that a book describing the fall and rise of British technologies since 1945 could be unputdownable, but Spufford shows it can be done.' Guardian Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode, The Backroom Boys tells the bittersweet story of modern British engineers and inventors. Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who sent the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars. Offers an account of how British boffins triumphed across the decades in creating everything from computer games to Martian landers. This book contains chapters on the Beagle II, Elite - the 80s computer game, the Blue Streak missile, Concorde, mobile phone technology and the Human Genome Project, among others.