The Brunels didn’t build the Thames Tunnel alone. Without hundreds of miners, bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths and others, they’d never have had any success. Against a backdrop of floods, strikes, and gawping tourists, the workers who built the world’s first underwater tunnel achieved a feat once thought unthinkable, and changed the way we travel forever. In …

Emma Joan Brunel was the sister of civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. However, little is actually know about her. She is merely a footnote in the numerous biographies about her famous brother. But the few facts that I was able to unearth suggest that she was an extraordinary woman in her own right. Emma was …