Despite its sub-title, The Seven Ages of One Man is not just a book about how one man started the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. It is much more...
This is Richard Hills' autobiography - the story of his life, work, passions and relationships, told in seven parts, or ages:
The child, born in 1936 into upper middle-class families whose way of life was shattered by the advent of war... The public and prep school boy introduced to engineering, mountaineering and railways at Rose Hill and Charterhouse... The young man enlisted for National Service, only to find more opportunities for... engineering, mountaineering and railways! The Cambridge undergraduate blossoming in faith, buying a Lancia Lambda, and becoming a mountaineering instructor... The fallen climber receiving miraculous healing from gangrene, a convalescence leading to a spell in teaching, restoring the Lancia, and a new interest in the drainage of the fens... The published writer and researcher, and a move to Manchester, becoming the founder and first curator of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry... The Reverend Doctor, making a new life in Mottram as priest, as author on many aspects of the history of engineering, becoming an authority on the history of papermaking, and finally at the age of 72 finding love and marriage to his beloved Bernice.
This is a story not to be missed - if you thought you knew Richard, you're bound to find out there is more to the man than you imagined.