Isambard Kingdom Brunel
- Episode aired Oct 22, 2002
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- Quotes
[Jeremy Clarkson is standing on top of one of the towers of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, looking out over the city of Bristol and the Avon Gorge]
Jeremy Clarkson: I'm slightly amazed that someone like Princess Diana is being discussed in this series. I'm sure she was a very lovely lady, but she's not really in the same class as Brunel. And John Lennon "I am the Egg-Man. I am the Walrus" - quite! And then there's William Shakespeare, a man who's brought *stupefying* boredom to the classroom for four hundred years. Let me put it this way. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Puck says he will put a girdle around the earth. Shakespeare wrote about it, but Brunel, with his bridges and his ships and his trains, he actually *did* it. Greatest Briton ever? I'm absolutely *sure* about it.
Clarkson obviously has a genuine love for his subject: after reeling off a lengthy list if Brunel's achievements he finishes with "...and we haven't even got to the ships yet." He not only shows you Brunel's spectacular work, he *explains* what makes it so good. Stepping out from behind the Great Britain's propeller blade he says: "A modern propeller, designed by a computer, in the 21st Century, is only 5% more efficient than this propeller, which was designed by Victorian bloke in a top hat - the man was a genius!" He also makes time to show how modern engineering is so often taken for granted and used for indifferent ends - the structure of the Millennium Dome weighs less than the air it contains, and it was used for a circus show.
This is an entertaining and informative programme which I have watched time and time again since it was broadcast.
- enochsneed
- Dec 1, 2017