Dam Buster - Barnes Wallis: An Engineer's Life

Sir Barnes Wallis CBE became a household name after the hit 1954 film The Dam Busters in which Michael Redgrave portrayed a shy, slightly abstracted genius at odds with bureaucracy. Yet this was a simplified picture of a complicated, mercurial man. Wallis'' contribution to British aircrafts and weapons is legendary; from the R100 intercontinental airship and innovative aircrafts like the Wellesley and Wellington, to bombs that destroyed hitherto invulnerable targets, and variable-geometry aerodynes. In addition to playing a significant part in both world wars and the Cold War, his work and inventions extended to a radio-telescope, ships, bridges, prosthetic limbs, and a nuclear-powered submarine designed to travel the world''s oceans in near silence. Yet little has been written the private Wallis; the man who fell in love with his 17-year-old distant cousin-in-law when he was 34 - and thus began a love that lasted 57 years; the man who loved the British countryside and spent every spare moment rambling. Using previously unseen letters and diaries, Barnes Wallis brings to life one of Britain''s greatest inventor''s: a visionary genius and private romantic; an insufferable pedant and a doting and patient son; and a self-mythologising martyr and a loyal friend.

Product details

• Authors: Richard Morris
• Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 11.05.2023
• EAN: 9781474623421
• ISBN: 978-1-4746-2342-1
• No. of pages: 528
• Dimensions: 154 mm x 238 mm x 48 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > 20th century (up to 1945); Non-fiction book > History > Biographies, autobiographies; FICTION / Historical / World War II, First World War, HISTORY / Military / World War I, 20th Century, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period), Ordnance, weapons technology