Is (17 page)

Realising I was shouting out loud, I turned around nervously to see if anyone had heard me. And my eyes were drawn across the grass to a statue on the other side of the road. There, in bronze, with his trademark top hat – clutching a ship in one hand and a railway engine in the other – was a statue of Brunel. I left my sandwich on the bench and ran over the road.

I was still holding the newspaper as I looked up at Brunel and suddenly I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. There was something about the set of the jaw line, the proudness of the lips and the way the eyes looked that seemed so very, very familiar.

I looked at the photograph of Is in the paper. I looked back at the statue. I felt tears well up in my eyes.

‘Is, you did it!' I cried, ‘You did it!'

I stood looking up at that statue for ages.

People probably thought I was barmy.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was probably the greatest engineer of his time, some say the greatest engineer
ever. He was born at the beginning of the nineteenth century and in his lifetime he was responsible for the Great Western Railway and twenty-five other railways, more than 100 bridges, eight dock systems, three ships and a pre-fabricated hospital.

Everything he did had to be bigger, better, longer, faster. He worked on the
first tunnel ever built underwater. He built the longest tunnel and the fastest train. Each of the three ships he built was the largest the world had ever seen when launched. He was only five feet tall – but in engineering terms Brunel was a giant.

Derek Webb was brought up in Portsmouth (where Brunel was born) and now lives in Pembrokeshire with his wife and son. He spent many years working as a creative director in a variety of major advertising agencies, before becoming a freelance scriptwriter and director in 1996. He is also a successful playwright with a number of stage plays published and professionally produced. His work for children includes dramatising a large number of books for audio, including The Minpins and Esio Trot by Roald Dahl; several of Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven stories; and eighty minute dramatisations of children's classics including The Secret Garden, The Railway Children and The Incredible Journey. He has also written a number of short stories for younger readers called Popplejoy and…. Is is his first full-length children's novel.

Find out more about Is and Brunel at

www.ikbrunel.org.uk

Parthian,
The Old Surgery,
Napier Street,
Cardigan.
SA43 1ED

www.parthianbooks.c
om

The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.

First published in 2010

© Derek Webb

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-909844-65-0

The right of Derek Webb to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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Find out more about Is and Brunel at www.ikbrunel.org.uk