travelkev

Ask anyone to name a famous English engineer and I’ll eat a stovepipe hat if nine times out of ten you don’t get the same name in reply.  He was voted the second greatest Briton of all time in a BBC survey in 2002 (pipped to the number one spot by Winston Churchill, and thrashing Newton who appeared sixth). Although he was, in fact half French and British (and bilingual) and lesser known on this side of the Channel now. The man in question is of course Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the “Little ...

A gold nose, a drunken pet moose, his own island and a bizarre death; the life of 16th century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahé was as colour..

In 1816, when the planet suffered the volcanic winter known as the “Year Without a Summer”, the English poet Lord Byron (described by...