“... but the ship itself was realised by others. In Glasgow, John Robertson made the engine and David Napier the boiler, while John Wood in Port Glasgow built the wooden hull and installed the machinery. The result was a marvel, the prototype of a steamer fleet that would revolutionise travel on the Clyde by 1820, when two dozen of them sailed every day ...”

“... when in the 1930s the moral interests of the UK were being so ill-served by the government of Baldwin and Chamberlain. I’ve never been much interested in Maclean, finding him as Burgess did something of a bore, but Philipps makes the story and the slow uncovering of his treachery a gripping narrative and an overwhelmingly sad one.2 ...”