Memories of Industrial Britain

Foundries and Rolling Mills

A personal tour through Britain's industrial heritage by a true national treasure

Fred Dibnah was a steeplejack, engineer, craftsman, artist, inventor, steam enthusiast and devotee of Britain's industrial heritage. He first appeared on television in 1979 and became a much-loved cultural icon. An exhaustive storyteller, Fred presented the television series Magnificent Monuments, Age of Steam, Industrial Age and Made in Britain. 
 
David Hall, a former journalist, teacher and producer for over 20 years, has made programmes for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and American television. He made all of Fred's last television series and was the producer of Fred Dibnah's World of Steam, Steel and Stone. David's writing credits include Fred: The Definitive Biography of Fred Dibnah, Fred Dibnah's Buildings of Britain, and with Fred, Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam.

Join engineer, steeplejack and beloved storyteller Fred Dibnah, as he takes you on a personal tour through industrial Britain. 
 
Bringing to life landmark events from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century in his typically engaging and anecdotal style, Fred introduces the great inventors from the age of steam, describes the day-to-day operation of railways, mills, forges and factories, and paints a vivid picture of what life was like for the mill-hands, colliers and engineers who laboured in industrial Britain - the workshop of the world. 
 
With a comprehensive gazetteer, which lists details of over 230 places of industrial interest - from steam railways and ships, to windmills and watermills - Foundries and Rolling Mills is a glorious portrait of Britain at the height of its industrial power, from one of our most revered figures.

Working Lives

A fascinating oral history of working lives in post-war industrial Britain.

Nostalgic and oddly moving . . . Hall brilliantly describes the heat and dangers of the weaving sheds and coal mines

A timely memorial for a nation that loves its pastoral history but struggles with the nobility of the industrial age

David Hall is a bestselling writer of non-fiction as well as a highly successful TV producer. His thirty years producing and directing network television programmes include a number of years at both Yorkshire Television and the BBC, as well as making landmark documentaries for Channel 4 and the History Channel. 
 
The biographer of Fred Dibnah, he was also Fred’s TV producer and a close personal friend for many years. He has published a number of books celebrating Fred’s life and interests, as well as Manchester’s Finest, an account of life in Manchester in the aftermath of the Munich air disaster.

In the early 1950s Britain was still the most urbanized and industrialized nation in the world, a global power in shipbuilding and the leading European producer of coal, steel, cars and textiles. For the many millions of men and women hard at work during that time, an infernal landscape of smoke-blackened factories, towering slag heaps and fiery furnaces dominated their lives. From the deep docks and towering cranes of the Tyneside shipyards to the mills and chimneys of Lancashire and beyond, Working Lives takes us right to the heart of those industrial centres through the words of those who were there. 
 
Drawn together from hundreds of hours of first-hand interviews, Working Lives is a unique collection of oral testimonies from workers whose stories might not otherwise have been told: mill girls who risked life and limb in dusty, noisy weaving sheds; steel workers who wrestled sheets of white-hot metal in the blistering heat of the foundries; and miners who hewed coal by hand on filthy, cramped, claustrophobic coalfaces. 
 
Local industries shaped these workers’ entire lives but also gave them a sense of pride, identity and belonging. As they look back on the dangers and hardships of their jobs, and the place of industry in their close-knit communities, these fascinating voices paint a vivid and moving portrait of working life in Britain not to be forgotten.

Fred Dibnah's Age Of Steam

FRED DIBNAH has always been a man out of his own time. Growing up a youth in the 1940s in Bolton, Lancashire, he lived near the railway lines and there began a lifelong fascination with steam locomotives. 
Fred’s love for all things steam is also a practical one; for the last 27years, he has been renovating a steam boiler and engine in his back garden and it is now nearly complete. As Fred grew up, despite parental disapproval, he pursued his first goal of becoming a steeplejack, and it was his outstanding skill in his chosen profession that led to his first appearance on television. 
DAVID HALL, once a journalist and teacher, has been producer for over 25years, making programmes for the BBC, ITV Network, Channel 4 and other broadcasters around the world. He worked with Fred since 1998 on Industrial Age, Buildings of Britain and Age if Steam. His latest work includes a documentary on Fred’s garden and Founders of the Great Dynasties for History Channel International. He enjoys travel, fell-walking and watching Manchester United whom he has followed since the 1950s.

Britains favourite steeplejack and industrial enthusiastic, the late Fred Dibnah, takes us back to the 18th century when the invention of the steam engine gave an enormous impetus to the development of machinery of all types. He reveals how the steam engine provided the first practical means of generating power from heat to augment the old sources of power (from muscle, wind and water) and provided the main source of power for the Industrial Revolution.    In Fred Dibnahs Age of Steam Fred shares his passion for steam and meets some of the characters who devote their lives to finding, preserving and restoring steam locomotives, traction engines and stationary engines, mill workings and pumps. Combined with this will be the stories of central figures of the time, including James Watts -  inventor of the steam engine - and Richard Trevithick who played a key role in the expansion of industrial Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Fred Dibnah - Made in Britain

Fred's  remarkable final journey in search of what made Britain great.

A wonderfully moving story about a remarkable man

David Hall was Fred Dibnah's TV producer for many years, as well as a close personal friend. He made all of the most recent television series and is also the producer of Fred Dibnah's World. He is the author of Fred: the definitive biography of Fred Dibnah, Fred Dibnah's Buildings of Britain and Manchester's Finest, an account of life in Manchester in the aftermath of the deaths of the Busby Babes.

In 2004, after felling his last chimney and retiring from steeplejacking, Fred took to the road on his beloved traction engine for the BBC series Made in Britain. Travelling the length and breadth of the country, the intention was to seek out the remarkable achievements of the craftsmen, engineers, inventors and industrial workers whose endeavour made engines like Fred's possible. It was a journey that took him to Britain's most iconic engineering marvels as well as less familiar sites: from the Forth Bridge and the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge to Europe's last deep-working iron ore mine in Cumbria and a local castings workshop in Bo'ness. 
 
This behind-the-scenes account of that ambitious journey is made all the more remarkable by Fred's heroic efforts to complete it while suffering from terminal cancer. It is not only a glorious testament to our nation's industrial achievements but also a story of the friendships, unfailing courage and determination of the nation's favourite steeplejack.

How the Munich air disaster broke the heart of a great city

Manchester's Finest

Not only the best book on Munich, but one of the very best books on the United. I presumed there was nothing new to say on the crash, but David Hall proved me completely wrong. It's a totally refreshing account, and Hall captures brilliantly the atmosphere of Manchester in those winter days of 1958.

Almost everything we've ever read about Munich has been from the point of view of the victims and the survivors - so David Hall's book is a welcome and fascinating record of what it was like to be an 11-year-old Mancunian whose team had its heart ripped out on a foreign airfield. It is the mass of telling detail which makes this book so interesting... intimate and personal.

Where David Hall's deeply humbling book differs, is that he offers a supporter's perspective of one of the most intimate tragedies of post-war Britain, one which united an entire nation, irrespective of one's club loyalties, in grief. [A] heart-rending tribute to a side that had become great ambassadors for club and country - both on and off the pitch.

As a child of the 70's and 80's, I have never read a more insightful account of what it was like to follow United in those far-off days... A picture may be worth a thousand words but these words create a thousand pictures... an essential part of anyone's reading about United history.

David Hall has been a lifelong Manchester United fan, and was eleven when the Munich air disaster happened. He has been a TV producer for over thirty years and made many television series with Fred Dibnah for the BBC. He is also the author of Fred, the definitive biography of Fred Dibnah, published by Bantam Press.

On 6 February 1958, British European Airways flight 609 crashed in a blizzard on its third attempt to take off from an icy runaway in Munich. On board were the Manchester United football team as well as a number of journalists and other passengers. News of the disaster sent shockwaves around the world. For people who lived in Manchester at the time and for football fans throughout Britain it was one of those moments when everybody remembers exactly where they were and how they heard the terrible news. 
 
Manchester United, nicknamed the Busby Babes after their manager, Matt Busby, who had created the world-beating side, were the leading team of the day. Seven of their players were killed instantly in the crash. Three weeks later Duncan Edwards, one of the most promising players ever to come out of England, lost his battle for life. Two other players, Jackie Blanchflower and Johnny Berry, were so severely injured that they were never able to play again. 
 
Manchester's Finest tells of this terrible air crash, but it is also the story of the immediate aftermath of the disaster and the effect on the city of Manchester. It paints a vivid picture of Manchester at that time, from February 1958 to the end of the season in May when a patched-up team, carried along on a great wave of emotion, reached the FA Cup Final. It is about the fans, the people of Manchester and about the place of a football team in the heart of a city.

The Definitive Biography Of Fred Dibnah

Fred

The official biography of a national treasure - now in paperback.

David Hall was Fred Dibnah's TV producer for many years, as well as a friend of the family. He made all of Fred's most recent television series and is also the producer of Fred Dibnah's World of Steam, Steel and Stone.

Fred Dibnah's World celebrates the life and work of Britain's best known steeplejack and national treasure, Fred Dibnhah. Before his death in 2004, Fred presented many popular series, including Magnificent Monuments, The Age of Steam and Made in Britain, all of which attracted viewers in their millions. 
 
Fred is the companion to the 12-part BBC2 series celebrating the life of this great man, which combines highlights from some of Dibnah's classic programmes with previously unseen footage. The book can of course go much further than the series, including an extraordinarily account of Fred's childhood which evokes a lost England and our great industrial heritage. Fred's passion for the glories of the Victorian age and his fascination with the landscape he grew up in, plus his admiration for the craftsmen and labourers who made it all possible, captivate us on every page. 
 
Fred is the personification of everything that made England great in the first place. And this is a glorious tribute to a man whom millions came to love.

David Hall

Straight talking, frank speaking - with Fred Dibnah you got what it says on the tin

Dibnah, a true man of the people... you can almost hear the echoes and smell the oil and smoke

Fred Dibnah was a man born out of his time. His era should have been the 'magnificent age of British engineering' - the nineteenth century - and his heroes were the great industrial engineers of the period whose prolific innovations and dedicated work ethic inspired a national mood of optimism and captured the hearts of the British public. 
 
Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes tells the stories of some of these men - including George and Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Whitworth - and what it was that made them such inspirational figures to Fred. What were their backgrounds? Where did their drive and vision come from? What sort of people were they at work and at home? And what was their contribution to the history of industry and engineering? 
 
Most of them - like Fred - were colourful, larger-than-life characters for whom no challenge was too great. Taking these fascinating characters as inspiration, Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes gets to the very heart of what allowed nineteenth-century Britannia to rule the waves . . .

David Hall

Praise for Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes

Straight talking, frank speaking - with Fred Dibnah you got what it says on the tin

Dibnah, a true man of the people... you can almost hear the echoes and smell the oil and smoke

Books by David Hall

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