Adventure in Iron. The blast furnace and its spread from Namur to northern France, England and North America, 1450–1650: a technological, political and genealogical investigation. By Brian G Awty. 295mm. Part one: pp xviii + 1–427. Part two: pp xii + 428–977, 37 figs, 18 tabs. Wealden Iron Research Group, Tonbridge, 2019. isbn 9781916042308. £45 + p&p (hbk) from the Wealden Iron Research Group (www.wealdeniron.org.uk)

The outcome is not merely a path-breaking study of the iron industry in Britain and on the Continent, but also a major contribution to the wider question of the diffusion of technology in Europe between the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. Most furnaces in this period were in the Weald, where a generation of scholarship, initially led by the late David Crossley and continued by the Wealden Iron Research Group, has established when almost all the furnaces and forges were in use and by whom they were operated. The book should be an essential purchase for all major academic libraries in Britain, and those in iron-making regions on the Continent and in North America.