num_pages: 0
description: Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode The Backroom Boys tells the bittersweet story of modern British engineers and inventors. Sad inspiring funny and ultimately triumphant it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying created the computer game conquered the mobile-phone business saved the human genome for the human race - and who sent the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars.
language: English
title: Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin
publisher: Faber and Faber