Philip Hamlyn Williams - Historian: June 2022

Friday 17 June 2022

Who made the kit supplied to our army?

In each of War on Wheels, Ordnance and Dunkirk to D Day, names of businesses appear which for me are laden with associations. They are names from childhood, from an earlier age. I knew the names, but so little about them.

This sent me on a quest. I traced the origin of companies to their birth and young life.

My great grandfather had exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and I found a copy of the catalogue. It was an astonishing event held through the summer in a vast glass building in London’s Hyde Park. In the catalogue I found many of the same business names but many more.

I explored endless avenues and the result is a book How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. It has just been published by Pen & Sword. I hope you will find it as interesting to read as I did to write. Here are links to other blog pieces on the subject: Motor Industry, Clothing,

I am now on a quest to discover what happened to those companies, for so many have faded from view: Vickers, ICI, Ferranti, Marconi, Plessey, GEC, John Brown, Hadley Page, AVRoe, Supermarine, Alvis…

Some though have prospered: Rolls-Royce, Johnson Matthey, Glaxo, Unilever, Jaguar, Dennis, Babcock…

So, added to my quest for what happened, is the question: why did it happen?

For the defence industry, much of the ‘What’ is to be found in BAE Systems but also Babcock. Yet nothing is that simple.

About me

Phil Hamlyn Williams's most recent project was the exploration of an assertion that Britain Created the Manufacturing World. The resulting books were published by Pen & Sword in 2022 and APS Books in December 2023.

Dunkirk to D Day - the stories of some of the RAOC men who fought in both world wars and who masterminded Ordnance supply for D Day, was published by Pen & Sword on 30 April.

His previous book, Ordnance, tells the story of the men and women who equipped the British Army for the Great War. It was published by The History Press in June 2018. His first book, War on Wheels, telling the story of the thousands of ordinary men and women who together worked to mechanise the British Army in WW2, was published by The History Press in September 2016. He wrote the story of the MacRobert's Reply collaborating with Story Terrace, published in December 2016. This is the story of an aeroplane, the woman who bought it and the men who flew it. He also wrote Charlotte Bronte's Devotee about William Smith Williams, the man who discovered and mentored Charlotte Bronte and a host of Victorian writers and artists. He writes family histories for Story Terrace and comments regularly on contemporary issues his own blogs. He is chair of trustees at The Lincoln Arts Trust which ran the Lincoln Drill Hall arts venue. He also chairs The Lincoln Book Festival.

He was awarded an MA in Professional Writing at University College Falmouth in 2009. He has been writing for fifteen years, having spent much of his career in professional services, most recently as a partner in Price Waterhouse, and in the not for profit sector.

Philip Hamlyn Williams - Historian

The final book of the trilogy on army supply

Friday 17 June 2022

Who made the kit supplied to our army?

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