Backroom Boys: The Secret Return Of The British Boffin

From the author of 'The Child That Books Built', a rapturous history of the amazing achievements of British engineers.

Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode, this book tells the bittersweet story of how one country lost its industrial tradition and got something back.

Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars.