Counter-Heritage

Everyone knows the name: Isambard Kingdom Brunel! And everyone knows that photograph: The top hat, the waistcoat, the cigar, The chain-link in the background for emphasis; The self-assured pride of the Victorian engineer, The man of the moment and momentum, Proud of his steamships on the oceans, And proud of his Great Western Railway: The dignified certainty of genius, Knowing that his one hundred-and-twenty mile long line Would run all the long level permanent way, From Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads, With a mean gradient of just 1 in 1,380. Just as his drawing board had intended. But where are the men who built it? And where are the women who followed The ever-expanding permanent way? Where are the Fox Talbot portraits of the navvies, With their picks and shovels and gunpowder, Their slide rule discipline and one hundred deaths, Taking the line through Box Tunnel, So that the sun shone clean right through On Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s birthday? Where is the tribute to their anonymity? A working-class hero is something to...