Sir Barnes Wallis CBE became a household name after the hit 1954 film
The Dam Busters in which Michael Redgrave portrayed a shy, slightly
abstracted genius at odds with bureaucracy. Yet this was a simplified
picture of a complicated, mercurial man.
Wallis' contribution to British aircrafts and weapons is legendary; from
the R100 intercontinental airship and innovative aircrafts like the
Wellesley and Wellington, to bombs that destroyed hitherto invulnerable
targets, and variable-geometry aerodynes. In addition to playing a
significant part in both world wars and the Cold War, his work and
inventions extended to a radio-telescope, ships, bridges, prosthetic
limbs, and a nuclear-powered submarine designed to travel the world's
oceans in near silence.
Yet little has been written the private Wallis; the man who fell in love
with his 17-year-old distant cousin-in-law when he was 34 - and thus
began a love that lasted 57 years; the man who loved the British
countryside and spent every spare moment rambling. Using previously
unseen letters and diaries, Barnes Wallis brings to life one of
Britain's greatest inventor's: a visionary genius and private romantic;
an insufferable pedant and a doting and patient son; and a
self-mythologising martyr and a loyal friend.
