Dam Buster

By Richard Morris

Paperback

Barnes Wallis, the Lost Visionary of British Aviation.

In this riveting biography, Richard Morris looks for the real Barnes Wallis: last in a line of engineers who combined hands-on experience with breath-taking ideas. Morris skilfully explores the creativity of this lost visionary - witnessed in airships, innovations in aircraft structure, and the bouncing bomb - and asks why he was eventually marginalised. 

The story he finds, of post-war elites who preferred to upgrade known solutions rather than gamble on new ones, has a moral for our own day. In unearthing it, Morris restores Wallis to his rightful place in the roll call of Britain's greatest inventors.