One of Derby’s best-known historians, Richard Felix, is working on a new book celebrating the people who helped make Derby one of the most innovative cities in Britain.
Felix, widely recognised for his work uncovering the stories of Derby’s past, is collaborating on a new publication titled “Derby – City of Innovation / Crossroads of History.” The book explores the remarkable number of inventors, engineers, scientists, artists and pioneers who have shaped the city and influenced the wider world.
The project builds upon Felix’s earlier work Derby Crossroads of History, first published in 1995, which highlighted many of the extraordinary figures connected with the city. At the time Felix proposed that Derby should proudly promote itself as “The Crossroads of History” on signs entering the city. While that idea was never adopted, the city has recently begun using a similar phrase on its welcome signs — “Derby – City of Innovation.”
The new book brings those two ideas together, showing how Derby’s position at the centre of England helped attract thinkers, inventors and pioneers across many centuries.
Among the figures featured are industrial pioneers such as John Lombe, whose silk mill in Derby is widely regarded as the world’s first factory, and Jedediah Strutt, whose inventions transformed the hosiery industry. The book also explores the work of Erasmus Darwin, one of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment, and Joseph Wright of Derby, the artist who famously captured the spirit of the Industrial Revolution on canvas.
Later chapters highlight Derby’s continuing role in global innovation through engineering achievements such as the Rolls-Royce aero-engine works, which produced the Merlin engine that powered the Spitfire during the Second World War and continues today as one of the world’s leading aerospace engineering centres.
But the book also includes some surprising names. One chapter tells the story of Lara Croft, the famous video game adventurer created at Core Design in Derby in the 1990s. Although the character is fictional, she became one of the most recognisable figures in global entertainment and helped revolutionise the video games industry. Her connection to the city is even marked in Derby today with a street named Lara Croft Way.
Other unexpected innovators featured include Harry Stevens, the Derby-born entrepreneur credited with inventing the modern hot dog at American baseball games, and Laurence Beesley, the Derby schoolmaster who survived the Titanic and wrote the first detailed account of the disaster.
Felix believes Derby’s story has never been fully appreciated.
“Derby has played a far bigger role in world history than many people realise,” he said. “From the birth of the factory system to modern aerospace engineering, this city has repeatedly been at the centre of innovation.”
By bringing together more than sixty innovators connected with the city, the authors hope the book will encourage people to see Derby in a new light — not simply as an industrial town, but as a place where ideas that shaped the modern world were born.
The publication is expected to attract interest from local historians, schools and anyone curious about the remarkable story of how one Midlands city helped influence science, industry, culture and even popular entertainment around the world.
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