An unusual 1957 book I came across was by Leonard Bertin. I think he was a journalist. Hardly anyone cites this book, the British nuclear pioneers only mention it once or twice in correspondence, there’s a certain clumsiness about it … yet he extracts some lovely interviews. In particular he seems to have struck up rapport with England’s #2 nuclear engineer, Leonard (Len) Owen, who crops up everywhere but remains opaque. For example, this quote ends with an evocative image that says a lot to me about Owen:
Sir Christopher Hinton (he was still plain “Mr.” then) was given the job of designing, building and operating the necessary factories. “We did several things very quickly indeed,” Owen told me. “One was to take this office at Risley. It was one of the biggest of the filling factories. Most of its 1,300 acres had been signed over to the Admiralty for use as their main storage depot in the North. We were just in time to place a caveat on this one corner, a few acres or so. We could have chosen London but office accommodation was not easy to find. Risley had in its favour the fact that it was in the middle of the heavy chemical and heavy engineering industry. We put our claws on the place.”
Bertin, Leonard. 1957. Atom Harvest. Secker & Warburg, London, pp. 107-108.
