Fred: The Definitive Biography Of Fred Dibnah

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This second of two hugely successful volumes on Fred Dibnah MBE commemorates the life and times of a truly Great Briton. Fred Dibnah MBE, born in Bolton, was a famous steeplejack and engineer, aswell as TV personality and steam enthusiast.

Fred became a high profile media personality and the fame which accompanied that status never affected him, or in any way changed his down to earth demeanour. Alan tells a wonderful tale using the event of the chimney drop as a reason (or an excuse perhaps) to tell the tale. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I would recommend this eminently readable book to anyone with any interest in industrial archaeology, in Fred Dibnah himself or in less conventional ways of the world.We discover all the different sides of Fred’s personality – engineer, steeplejack, artist, craftsman, steam enthusiast, inventor, storyteller and eccentric. There are some books about a person and their work can only be written by an individual with a similar background both in industry and the life to that person, and their work.

By the early 1960s the cotton industry and its ancillary trades were in a severe downward spiral of decline. This behind-the-scenes account of that ambitious journey is made all the more remarkable by Fred’s heroic efforts to complete it while suffering from terminal cancer. I think this is the best book in the dibnah series it covers the best points of all the others publications and goes into enough detail of freds life to make it interresting for most readers. Whilst the preparations of each, and indeed the occasion itself might be similar to the last, each and every one is an entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable read.The book features a brief introduction to Fred's early life but it is his work that the book is based on. But to just place an explosive charge in the chimney’s base and blow them down when they came to the end of their lives, did not appeal to Fred, for to him there was another more traditional way of felling these chimneys that embodied respect for the old time chimney builders – and would demolish them with great aplomb and not a little drama.