The exploration of army supply that Phil Hamlyn Williams made for his books War on Wheels, Ordnance and Dunkirk to D Day created an itch that wouldn’t go away. Who were the British companies who made all the equipment the army used? This triggered a quest that built on an interest in British manufacturing based on the many clients he worked for as a practicing accountant including as a partner in Price Waterhouse.
He has now completed his sixth book beginning an exploration of British manufacturing. His great-grandfather exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and it is through the prism of the exhibition catalogue that he explores the story back to its origins and then forward to the Festival of Britain, one century later. He found that in the late eighteenth century, a remarkable combination of factors and circumstances combined to give birth to Britain as the first manufacturing nation. Further factors allowed it to remain top manufacturing dog well into the twentieth century whilst other countries were busy playing catch up. Through two world wars and the surrounding years, British manufacturing remained strong, albeit whilst ceding the lead to the United States.
He writes of the inventors and the engineers but also the marketeers, managers and entrepreneurs. Looking back through history, there is a grubby British thumb-print on many of the world’s manufacturing industries.
The book is published by Pen & Sword and you can buy it by following this link.
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