New Book
The Firebringers by Max Adams
Reviewed by Constance Fraser
The author of this strange book has strung his account of England (or rather London and the North East) on the lives of four Martin brothers, William, Richard, John and Jonathan, from Haydon Bridge, and a series of free-thinkers – scientific as well as literary – who met at John Martin’s house in London. These he describes as Prometheans – the eponymous ‘Firebringers’. Readers living in the North East can find the germs of local history in accounts of colliery-disasters and the search for a safety-lamp. (George Stephenson is firmly put in his place.) While there are the set-pieces of Jonathan Martin’s firing of York Minster and John Martin’s struggle to gain recognition for his epic canvases, there is a kaleidoscope of titanic struggles to hammer out their scientific problems as Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday, Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Babbage, Charles Wheatstone, Joseph Bramah and Henry Maudslay. Turner appears for the arts, Caroline Norton for women’s rights, Mary Shelley for science fiction and a host of politicians from Brougham and Melbourne to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld fight their corner. The juxtaposition of biographies and the speed of the narrative can be bewildering! Personally and as a non-scientist I should have found a series of diagrams to explain the many technical points in the earlier chapters very helpful.
City and County
May 2009
