Thomas Telford began as an Eskdale shepherd’s son laying stones and ended as the ‘Colossus of Roads’: the Ellesmere and Caledonian canals, the London-Holyhead road, and the Menai suspension bridge that hung a highway in the sky. Samuel Smiles tells the life with his signature blend of biography and gospel of work.
Along the way it is a history of how Britain got its arteries. Download the free EPUB for civil engineering’s heroic age.