Virtual Lecture – Dam Buster: Barnes Wallis, An Engineer’s Life
06 June 2024
On Thursday 6th June 2024 at 6.00pm, Richard Morris will discuss the life and legacy of Barnes Wallis. This virtual talk will be live-streamed via Crowdcast.
Talk Outline
Barnes Wallis has been claimed as Britain’s greatest engineer of the twentieth century. Richard Morris’s new biography rests on sources that include company, public and technical records, the private papers of individuals, the archive of Wallis’s first biographer, and thousands of letters.
Focusing on four areas – the lasting influence of Wallis’s mother, the emergence of the R100 airship, Wallis’s friendship with the shadowy banker Leo d’Erlanger, and tensions across government and the aero industry in the 1950s and 60s – Richard Morris will explore opportunities, challenges and questions that arise from the letters.
Location
This lecture will be livestreamed via the RAF Museum’s Crowdcast channel.
Tickets
This lecture is free but registration is required to attend. Follow the link below for quick and easy registration.
About Richard Morris OBE
Richard Morris is an archaeologist and historian who grew up in north Worcestershire and began his career working on excavations under York Minster. He is emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Huddersfield. Faith (Churches in the Landscape, Evensong), place (Yorkshire), cultural memory (Time’s Anvil), battlefield archaeology, aviation and its people are among the themes in his writing. Dam Buster completes a trio of biographies – Guy Gibson (1994) and Cheshire(2000) are the others – which meet in the record of No. 617 Squadron RAF.
