Cheshire based KEITH LANGSTON is a widely published and highly respected photo journalist who specialises in heritage transportation and industrial archaeology subjects. The text covers 28 different ‘chimneys’, all but about 5 of which stood within a 12 mile radius of Fred’s own home, indeed a handful were within walking distance. Never really took it on board, did his utmost to stop it preventing anything that he wanted to do and just got on with it.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Dedicated to the memory of Fred Dubnah, it charts the progress of Fred Dibnah’s chimney drops from 1970 to 2004, interspersed with valuable old photographs, personal memories of the man himself, quips and some tall tales. Growing up a youth in the 1940s in Bolton, Lancashire, he lived near the railway lines and there began a lifelong fascination with steam locomotives. Alan continued: “His name became synonymous with the stereo type no nonsense, straight talking Northern character, and of craftsmanship, hard graft and of daring do.The resulting book included contributions from many people who knew Fred well, including some of his closest friends. A lifelong Manchester United fan, one of his books chronicles life in Manchester in the aftermath of the deaths of the Busby Babes in the Munich air disaster.

He has passionately and vividly written this excellent book that chronicles 28 of Fred’s amazing and often exceedingly dangerous chimney drops. Fred had the uncanny and somewhat unique knack of talking through a TV camera so that the viewer actually felt a personal contact with him.Please keep in mind that because we deal mostly in used books, any extra components, such as CDs or access codes, are usually not included.

The demise of this once prominent industry (in the nineteenth century the boast of Lancashire’s millowners was: ‘England’s bread was won by Lancashire’s thread’), was excellent at first for the young Fred Dibnah whose ambition and most fervent desire was to become established as a steeplejack. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). Fred's love for all things steam is also a practical one; for the last 27years, he has been renovating a steam boiler and engine in his back garden and it is now nearly complete.We are a sister company of the Slovenian Publishing House Pipinova Knjiga – which literary translates to Pipin’s Book. It covers most of the later tv series he made and gives enough depth into his life, not to go into the technical details of steam engines, but enough to make good reading.

But to just place an explosive charge in the chimney’s base and blow them down when they came to the end of their lives, did not appeal to Fred for to him there was another more traditional way of felling these chimneys that embodied respect for the old time chimney builders and would demolish them with great aplomb and not a little drama”. Fred became famous through a TV series on his methods, using well tried Victorian practice of ‘gobbing out and pit propping’. He brings the text alive with anecdotes and quotations aplenty but his writing is so eloquent he brings the day itself alive. Read our Privacy Policy to give you more detailed information about your rights and how we use your data. This publication takes the reader on a fascinating journey during the making of Fred's last TV series in 2004.Before his death in 2004, Fred presented many popular series, including Magnificent Monuments , The Age of Steam and Made in Britain, all of which attracted viewers in their millions. Fred also had a profound interest in the many classes of steam locomotives that regularly clanked by close to his boyhood home in Burden Park, and he regularly visited Bolton Loco Depot, where he would spend hour upon hour, fascinated, watching and studying the various steam shunting locomotives and goods engines stabled at the sheds.