Notes on "Isambard Kingdom Brunel: A graphic biography" by Simon Gurr and Eugene Byrne
It's Brunel's 200th birthday this year, and Bristol is celebrating. The city owes much to the short little engineer, whose masterpieces still dominate much of the local architecture and transport infrastructure.
As part of the celebrations, and to teach the young 'uns about the great man, a graphic biography of his life was commissioned. Someone thought it would be a great idea to print off 130,000 copies of it and distribute them for free in libraries across the south west. I picked one up.
What a great book. Yes, it's aimed at 11-year-olds but I learned a great deal from it, and enjoyed the read as I went along. Everyone knows that Brunel built great things like bridges and ships and tunnels and railway lines, but I didn't previously know about his acts of almost insane bravery (rescuing trapped workers from the flooded tunnel under the Thames, for example), or any detail about his family life.
This is not your average freebie from the local library; it's professionally written and drawn, professionally printed. They could have flogged it for six or seven quid, and it would still have been a bargain. Chances are that unless you're passing a library in or around the south west-ish sort of part of the UK, you might find it hard to get your hands on a copy of this. You should try, though.
Labels: books
