The remarkable Isambard Kingdom Brunel made a greater contribution to the landscape of the Bristol area than any other single individual before or since. Few would argue with Angus Buchanan’s judgement: a splendid bridge over the Avon Gorge, a railway network radiating out from Bristol, with Brunel’s original Temple Meads station still intact (if put to new uses), the Floating Harbour surviving largely because of the improvements which he introduced, and the s.s. Great Britain now handsomely restored in the dry dock from which she was launched in 1843. This book – the only one to concentrate on Brunel’s associations with the city of Bristol – tells of the great engineer’s triumphs, exasperations and disappointments in the city which, as a young man, he adopted as his own and which he continued to regard with affection for the rest of his life.