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Gavin Weightman
Atlantic Books (UK)

Children of Light: How Electricity Changed Britain Forever

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AuthorGavin Weightman
PublisherAtlantic Books (UK)
PublishedApr 01 2011
Book FormatHardcover
ISBN-139781848871175
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Weight-
BISAC
CategoriesTechnology & Engineering > Electrical
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

In the early 1870's a nighttime view over Britain would have revealed towns lit by the warm glow of gas and oil lamps and a much darker countryside, the only light emanating from the fiery sparks of late running steam trains. However, by the end of this same decade, Victorian Britons would experience a new brilliance in their streets, town halls, and other public places. Electricity had come to town. In Children of Light, Gavin Weightman brings to life not just the most celebrated electrical pioneers, such as Thomas Edison, but also the men such as Rookes Crompton who lit Henley Regatta in 1879; Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, a direct descendant of one of the Venetian Doges, who built Britain's first major power station on the Thames at Deptford; and Anglo-Irish aristocrat, Charles Parsons inventor of the steam turbine, which revolutionized the generating of electricity. Children of Light takes in the electrification of the tramways and the London Underground, the transformation of the home with labor saving devices, the vital modernizing of industry during two world wars, and the battles between environmentalists and the promoters of electric power, which began in earnest when the first pylons went up. As Children of Light shows, the electric revolution has brought us luxury that would have astonished the Victorians, but at a price we are still having to pay.

Author Bio

At school I did not study history and my interest in the past was not excited until I took a degree in sociology at Bedford College, London University. It was an old-fashioned course which included a great deal of social and economic history which I had never come across in school. Our professor, the flamboyant Oliver McGregor was keen on agricultural history and harangued us about the iniquities of the enclosure of land and the importance of innovations in ploughing techniques.

It was at Bedford College ( which is long gone ) that I first began to study the industrial revolution, a huge subject that has fascinated me ever since. I had worked as a local journalist for five years before I went to university, by which time I was twenty-two. I went back into journalism writing features and leaders before joining New Society magazine (which is also long gone ) in 1974. In the four years I was there I wrote on a huge range of subjects, including the history of poaching in Britain and developed an interest in housing and many social issues. Read more..

Quite by chance I was invited to join London Weekend Television's Friday night current affairs show The London Programme as a reporter. I knew nothing at all about television at first but in time became a producer, then a producer-director and the author of many programmes which I also wrote and narrated. My background in social history was invaluable as I tackled the history of London in two series of The Making of Modern London. I had always had an interest in wildlife and I had the luck to be given the opportunity to make a series called City Safari and later Brave New Wilderness. With the London history series I had started writing books, along with Steve Humphries who worked with me as an associate producer. Steve is still making wonderful television programmes with his own company Testimony Films based in Bristol.

Source: gavin-weightman.co.uk

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