Philip Hamlyn Williams

My latest book, Vehicles to Vaccines, is the result of a quest to discovered what had happened to British manufacturing since the Festival of Britain in 1951. It follows How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, which seeks to tell the story of British manufacturing through the prism of the Great Exhibition of 1851 until the Festival of Britain, a century later. My research into how the army was supplied in the world wars revealed the names of many British manufacturers; I needed to find where they had come from and what happened to them. It is an astonishing transformation.

I found the story for my first three books in some astonishing albums my mother kept of my father's war: War on Wheels told the story of the mechanisation of the army in WW2 and Ordnance how the army was supplied in WW1. Dunkirk to D Day dug deeper and explored the lives of many of those, including my own father, who led the RAOC in WW2.

Charlotte Brontė’s Devotee, really found me, since my name appeared on a family tree a Brontė follower was researching. He wanted to find out more about William Smith Williams, the Reader at publishers, Smith, Elder & Co. who recognised her genius. I am Smith Williams’s great, great nephew.

MacRoberts Reply came about as a collaboration between Phil Jeffs, the son of the sole survivor of the crash of the aeroplane that bore the MacRobert name, and Story Terrace.

The History Press asked me to write the Forward to a remarkable book of images of D Day. I have unending respect for those involved in this event that I am sure defined my father's life and those of many others who had laboured so hard and risked so much.

Formerly a partner in accountants Price Waterhouse and then the holder of a number of senior management positions in the voluntary sector, I rather belatedly went to University first to Exeter as a distance learning student gaining a First Class Degree in Humanities and then to University College Falmouth where I was a awarded an MA in Professional Writing. I am now firmly into my third career as a writer.