Sir George White made a fortune in Bristol by bringing trams to the city, but in 1910 he decided to start an aeroplane manufacturing company. At the very least, people would ride on his trams to see his aircraft fly. From the start he was not a starry eyed aviation enthusiast - it is doubtful whether he actually ever flew - and realised that building aircraft would only be viable if he could sell them at a profit. He started by acquiring the British manufacturing rights for Zodiac models designed by Gabriel Voisin. They didn't work very well, so he pirated a Farman biplane design (the Boxkite). When Farman threatened to sue for breach of copyright, he showed that he had improved the plans so much as to fundamentally alter the design, and the case was dropped. He had two good ideas - he started flying schools for potential customers, as did Bleriot - and sited one of them on Salisbury Plain where the ever conservative Army would have to watch the development flying. He delivered 260 aircraft from 1910 1914.

The War made a huge difference. An early contract to build BE2s resulted in over 1000 coming from the Bristol factories and gave the company breathing space in which to develop the Bristol Scout and then the Fighter of which over 5300 were built, some staying in service as late as 1937.

The interwar years were as difficult for the company as for most, but it survived by the RAF standardising on the Bristol Fighter, by constantly producing new designs and by acquiring the services of Roy Fedden, who was probably the best aircraft engine designer of the twentieth century. He was responsible designs including the Jupiter, fitted to 262 different types of aeroplane, followed by Pegasus, Taurus and finally his greatest, the Centaurus.

World War II saw the Blenheim, Beaufort and the Beaufighter. Afterwards the Brabazon, which showed that Government intervention was not the way to build an airliner, the Britannia and then Concorde (see Brabazon above), by which time the company had been subsumed into British Aerospace.

The book finishes with the Concorde crash, and a view of the future with the Airbus A3XX which will be flying as Bristol completes a century in the aviation business.

Sir Robert Wall worked for the Company for 40 years and loves it. Although this is a 'pictorial' History, I enjoyed the text enormously, and to me it is a valuable piece of social history, as a whole community which is still there, grew up around the aircraft works at Filton. This book tells how and why. It is a worthy record of a marvelous company.