What the Victorians Got Wrong (Britain's Living History)

The Victorian era produced some really innovative stuff, but whist striving with their efforts, they produced a few 'dogs' which sometimes ended in disaster and loss of life (I.K. Brunel for instance). Its only a very small publication with not a huge amount of pages, so it does short skim over the surface of just a few examples. These are quite detailed though, with pictures and illustrations, much of which left me, an amateur social historian, wanting more.

interesting, approachable book

Great book - a real eye-opener as to how stupid and error moralist these folk really were. John Betjeman loved them but I don't.

This is a well researched and well written book, the text being supported by good, clear images. Having chosen to approach the Victorians from an unusual angle - what they got wrong - the author has written a real eye-opener, explaining in detail just what the Victorians did 'get wrong' on selected subjects. Where usually one reads of Victorian successes in engineering, etc, here we see their failures and how we learned from them. Very readable and recommended. I'm going through it a second time!

Not quite as interesting as I thought it was going to be, but informative and clearly well researched. I'm sure there are many more things that the Victorians got wrong, so by no means a definitive work, mainly engineering based.