The story of Frank Whittle - RAF pilot, mathematician of genius, inventor of the jet engine and British hero. In 1985 Hans von Ohain, the scientist who pioneered Nazi Germany's efforts to build a jet plane, posed the question: 'Would World War II have occured if the Luftwaffe knew it faced operational British jets instead of Spitfires?' He immediately answered, 'I, for one, think not.' Frank Whittle, working-class outsider and self-taught enthusiast, had worked out the blueprint of a completely new type of engine in 1929, only for his ideas to be blocked by bureaucratic opposition until the outbreak of war in 1939. The importance of his work was recognized too late by the government for his revolutionary engine to play a major part in World War II. After the war Whittle's dream of civilian jet-powered aircraft became a reality and Britain enjoyed a golden age of 1950's jet-powered flight. Drawing on Whittle's extensive private papers, Campbell-Smith tells the story of a stoic and overlooked British hero, a tantalizing tale of 'what might have been'.

The story of Frank Whittle - RAF pilot, mathematician of genius, inventor of the jet engine and British hero. In 1929, a twenty-two-year-old maverick named Frank Whittle - a self-taught aeronautical obsessive and risk-takingly brilliant RAF pilot - presented a blueprint for a revolutionary, jet-powered aircraft engine to the Air Ministry. His idea had the potential to change the course of history, but it was summarily rejected. In this meticulously researched biography, Duncan Campbell-Smith charts Whittle's stoic efforts to build his jet engine in the interwar years, during which he was constantly frustrated to find his ground-breaking project impeded by bureaucratic inertia until the outbreak of war in 1939. Eventual recognition of the importance of his work by the British government came too late for Whittle's invention to play a major part in the Second World War, but after the war his dream of civilian jet powered aircraft was gradually realized - eventually transforming the entire world of air travel. Gripping in its narrative, authoritative in its technical detail and insightful in its judgements, Jet Man is the definitive telling of the life of an engineering icon and unjustly neglected British hero of the Second World War - and a tantalizing tale of 'what might have been'. Reviews for Jet Man: 'A very well-written and long overdue corrective account of an extraordinary man' James Hamilton-Paterson 'Highly readable, and based on thorough research, Jet Man casts new light on the intense, heroic character of Frank Whittle and his revolutionary invention. The tale of how he overcame all the obstacles in his path is a gripping one. What also makes Duncan Campbell-Smith's narrative compelling is the way the complex mechanics of jet propulsion are so clearly explained' Leo McKinstry

For almost a hundred years from the 1860s, the City of London's overseas banks financed the global trade that lay at the core of the British Empire. Foremost among them from the beginning were two start-up ventures: the Standard Bank of South Africa, which soon developed a powerful domestic franchise at the Cape, and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China. This book traces their stories in the nineteenth century, their glory days before 1914 - and their remarkable survival in the face of global wars and the collapse of world trade in the first half of the twentieth century. The unravelling of the Empire after 1945 eventually forced Britain's overseas banks to confront a different future. The Standard and the Chartered, alarmed at the expansion of American banking, determined in 1969 on a merger as a way of sustaining the best of the City's overseas traditions. But from the start, Standard Chartered had to grapple with the fading fortunes of its own inherited franchise - badly dented in both Asia and Africa - and with radical changes in the nature of banking. Its British managers, steeped in the past, proved ill-suited to the challenge. By the late 1980s, efforts to expand in Europe and the USA had brought the merged Group to the brink of collapse. Yet it survived - and then pulled off a dramatic recovery. Standard Chartered realigned itself, just in time, with the phenomenal growth of Asia's 'emerging markets', many of them in countries where the Chartered had flourished a century earlier. In the process, the Group was transformed. Trebling its workforce, it brushed aside the global financial crisis of 2008 and by 2012 could look back on a decade of astonishing growth. Recent times have added an eventful postscript to a long and absorbing history. Crossing Continents recounts Standard Chartered's story with a wealth of detail from one of the richest archives available to any commercial bank. The book also affords a rare and compelling perspective on the evolution of international trade and finance, showing how Britain's commercial influence has actually worked in practice around the world over one hundred and fifty years.