Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, The

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 2004 by Marsden, Ben

Throughout the book Buchanan insists on Brunei's 'vision'. Thus the Great Western Railway carried the 'visionary stamp of his own creative genius' (p. 81). But vision turns out to be a slippery concept: although outstanding in its continuity (for Brunel), it might never be fully realised (as with the GWR), it might be premature (the Great Eastern) or, having no successors (like others of Brunel's projects), it might be sterile. Some visionary projects failed because they were 'beyond the imagination of [Brunel's] contemporaries to accept' (p. 63) but others, like the GWR locomotives salvaged by Gooch, appear not to have been the victims of lack of imagination. Buchanan has, then, a difficult task. Brunel's decided lack of vision concerning workers' rights was not 'a personal failure' (p. 183), since it was typical of his age. The experimental atmospheric railway, the launch of the Great Eastern and the many other disasters of his career are addressed head-on, in a separate chapter, but they are framed as tributes to his capacity for survival or lapses for which posterity has forgiven him. I doubt whether Brunel would have welcomed our forgiveness. There is no doubt, however, that historians will welcome this impressive biography as the starting point for further explorations into the man Smiles called 'the very Napoleon of engineers'.

Ben Marsden, University of Aberdeen