Book review: Backroom Boys, the secret return of the British Boffin

The opening chapter of Francis Spufford’s book, The Backroom Boys, is titled “Flying Spitfires to the stars.” That says everything about the book. It’s a mix of nostalgia for an imagined past where Brits invented stuff and changed the world and hope for an imagined future where Brits do, well, pretty much the same thing. But each chapter tells the story of how the present – from the 50s to the 90s – is a kind of heroic failure.

It is a series of stories about British inventors, the backroom boys of the title. It begins with the British space programme. (Did you know that the UK is the only country that launched a satellite and then totally gave up the capability to do so again?) It takes in Concorde, the inventors of the famous computer game Elite, the cellular telephone and the wonderful Colin Pillinger of Beagle 2 fame.

I really enjoyed the book but I think that the focus on failures is unnecessary. There are plenty of examples of hugely successful British inventors: Formula One engineering firms, Surrey Small Satellites, Jonathan Ive at Apple or Tim Berners-Lee etc. etc. The British boffin is not making a secret return because he never went away.

See: The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin on Amazon.

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