ABSTRACT
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, 1806–59, was unique in the annals of British civil engineering. His nature was a mixture – of the Napoleonic, the artist and the connoisseur of fine art. He grew up under the shadow of his father – Marc – whose mechanically inventive genius was much greater than Isambard’s. Marc urged his son into engineering greatness, and the son grew up, in the very impecunious Brunel household, under his father’s shadow, bursting with ‘great’ ideas, dreaming of achieving greatness, full of anxiety in case he should fail.
